A Study On Urban Riverfront Green Space Design

River was often the origins of cities.As one of the most prosperous sectors in urban history,waterfronts have good city form with beautiful scenery and deep cultural background.Thus it was inevitably growing as one of the most important section of the city.Since the development of shipping industry and manufacture,urban rivers were usually modified greatly.That modification takes riverfronts abandoned and contaminative,with waterfront culture losing.As effective measures to improve river environment,not only aesthetics should be emphasized in riverfront landscape design,but also restoring river environment,as well as the protection of historical heritages and city culture.River corridors have become important resources for the preservation of nature and habitat restoration because they remain a continuous natural feature within urban landscapes.This study develops riverfront design strategies and principles to enhance habitats and species diversity,restore hydrological processes,and provide opportunities for human activities.Those design strategies and principles developed from integration and literature on waterfront design and landscape ecology,and the cases study that integrates ecological and human concerns.The resulting principles were applied to different riverfronts in several,including internal and overseas urban riverfront,to illustrate and understand their usefulness.Mitigation and restoration measures could be applied to enhance the ecological function of the river corridors and applied to re-establish the lost connectivity by enhancing vegetation,part of the floodplain by removing barriers and linkage of water systems.Hydrological processes are enhanced by using bioengineering to the retaining wall and construction of buffers and bioretention ponds or swales.In some sites,the principles could not be applied because of the presence of buildings and low water table.Their mitigation would represent a costly initiative and almost being impossible.How to establish and create healthier natural systems,while addressing human needs in riverfront environments of theses cities could have been studied further.Riverfronts are mostly clutter of factories,transport facilities and residential in many cities,which made rivers spoiled.Renewing and alteration in those sites were needed to integrate offices,commerce,recreation,residence and tourism in the riverfronts.The designers would not only with an eye to beautiful scenery,but also to integration of the overall development of cities,the protection of city form and urban renewal.Recreation facilities,historical sites and other open space nearby should also be linked into a whole. The development of waterfronts should be enhanced by improvement of riverfront environment and adjustment of their function.With riverfront often being a place with deep historical and cultural background, inheritance and extension of the unique waterfront culture is a key to riverfront greenspace design.Both protection of historical heritage and recreational needs of different groups should be regarded equally,new vitality and new historical positioning should be given to those.All those should be symbiotic and prosperous with their surrounding,and the riverfronts would have been multifunctional open space with vogue and deep historical background in cities.Steward and construction of riverfront greenspace in urban environmentally sensitive areas should be regarded equally.Design,construction and steward should be integrated to achieve sustainable development of urban rivers.