A Study On Planning And Design Of Highway Landscaping

With the fast-paced economical development, as a modern transportation infrastructure, the ever-expanding highway network in China is playing a more and more important role in the national social-economical life, due to its desirable features such as high-speed, safety, efficiency, and low power consumption. In developed countries, there are specialized organizations and professionals that focus on the study of highway landscaping. However, this study is still in its infancy in China, although a good foundation has been laid out through years of exploration and experimentation, going through stages including simulation, revision, expansion, and improvement, etc. In the planning and design of highway landscape, based on the traditional landscaping esthetics and in combination with local culture and site-specific natural environments, many unique highway landscapes have been developed over the years. Unfortunately, constrained by various conditions, in practice it is often the case that the landscaping is done segment by segment wherever the road extends. This results in a highway landscape that lacks global planning and thus the resultant landscaping is often negatively impacted.This study intends to address the above issue by systematically discuss the key elements of landscaping design in the context of highway landscape. In particular, based on esthetic properties of human visual system such as color vision, the study investigates highway landscape sequences, road linear landscape, roadside landscape, and road-wide landscape. Further, a general recommendation for evaluation of highway landscape is provided. This leads to the establishment of the general rules and key factors in the planning and design of highway landscape. Accordingly, a systematic design methodology and its corresponding planning principles are presented. The approach is then experimented in the practice of the planning and design of the highway landscape in the city of Guiyang.