A visual landscape assessment approach for high-density urban development - A GIS-based index

The rapid developments of economy and urbanization bring great pressure to natural environment and resources, which contribute big challenge to sustainable urban development in high-density urban areas like Hong Kong, China and many other Eastern Asia cities. In these areas, protecting natural landscape resources and enhancing visibility to urban spaces and residential zones has become significant in improving the livability of human settlement. This paper presents a new approach in assessing the visual quality in high-density urban environment. the principal methodology is to quantitatively integrate human visual perception parameters with the visible landscape resources' characteristics. GIS is employed as the database and technical platform. A residential development in Hong Kong was used as a case study. The approach provides decision making support 10 urban planning, site layout design, and estate management during the early stage of the schematic design/planning, process.