Current Approaches of Ecological Sustainability in Urban Planning

ABSTRACT

The most important way to deal with urgent problems in the history of world is to pay attention to the dialogue with our past. The fact that the local government is effective in the city administration, which came to the agenda with the COVID- 19 process, shows that the planning approaches should be specific to the city. Because every city is affected by this process in different ways due to its own dynamics. Therefore, the protection of local knowledge and the development of planning and design decisions based on local knowledge is highly valuable. In this respect, it should be remembered that the international environmental law documents developed as a result of environmental crises and the urban planning approaches created within the scope of these documents provide important knowledge and experience in dealing with global problems. This study examines the perspectives and approaches of urban planning theory and practices related to nature- culture harmonization, which have come to the fore intensively with the COVID- 19 process. Perspective is the way you always observe and understand something from one angle. The information produced in this direction is contextual. In other words, knowledge does not develop independently of the fact, and the opinion of the individual. Approaches defining the theoretical and conceptual background of anthropocentric perspective and ecocentric perspective, which determines the human- nature relationship in landscape architecture have existed as a result of local, regional and global phenomena and since the establishment of the profession;but their conceptualizations have taken place in recent years. Although it is too early to predict how the pandemic process will create a change in the planning and design knowledge (episteme) in the field of landscape architecture, it is obvious that the professional discipline has to use the knowledge of the past more effectively in both planning and design, and it has to improve its relationship with the field of landscape ecology and social sciences. It is possible that sustainability rhetoric is used extensively in developing the relationship in between Landscape Architecture and other fields. However, Landscape Architecture has the power to overcome the sustainability rhetoric with ecological design approaches such as sustainable infrastructure, green infrastructure and ecosystem services, and to integrate the ecosystem into daily life and to ensure harmony with nature. © 2023 Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.