Urban-Rural Synergy Between Housing Spatial Patterns and Landscape: Typological Classification of Belgrade Socialist Settlements from an Environmental Perspective

The morphogenesis of the urban territory and its contact with the non-urbanized, natural environment of the wider metropolitan area distinguish issues of the synergy between landscape and spatial patterns in order to achieve their balance, optimization, and harmony. This chapter highlights the conceptual framework of landscape ecology as linking to place-based design approach for studying the synergy of landscape and housing spatial patterns in order to improve their integration in future perspective. The territory of the city of Belgrade is recognized as a specific spatial-morphological system that is a consequence of the urban-rural synergy between socialist housing settlements and environmental processes. The chapter points at the environmental and functional values of nature with a particular focus on housing typology in the process of urban planning and architectural design

Sustainable urban development: an integrated framework for urban planning and development

Sustainable development has long been promoted as the best answer to the world’s environmental problems. This term has generated mass appeal as it implies that both the development of the built environment and its associated resource consumption can be achieved without jeopardising the natural environment. In the urban context, sustainability issues have been reflected in the promotion of sustainable urban development, which emphasises the sensible exploitation of scarce natural resources for urbanisation in a manner that allows future generations to repeat the process. This chapter highlights attempts to promote sustainable urban development through an integration of three important considerations: planning, development and the ecosystem. It highlights the fact that spatial planning processes were traditionally driven by economic and social objectives, and rarely involved promoting the sustainability agenda to achieve a sustainable urban future. As a result, rapid urbanisation has created a variety of pressures on the ecosystem upon which we rely. It is believed that the integration of the urban planning and development processes within the limitations of the ecosystem, monitored by a sustainability assessment mechanism, would offer a better approach to maintaining sustainable resource use without compromising urban development