Urban Landscaping

(1) A complex of measures to create and utilize greenery in populated areas.

(2) The areas of greenery in population centers.

Landscaping in densely populated areas helps to improve the microclimate and

sanitary conditions. The greenery reduces wind velocity, limits the spread of
dust and aerosols, reduces the concentration of smoke and harmful gases in
the air, and muffles urban noise. It creates a natural landscape in populated
areas.

In urban design, the planting of greenery is an integral part of the layout,

development, and organization of public services in populated areas. In Soviet
urban design, landscaping is carried out according to scientifically based
principles and standards. In built-up areas, designers take care to provide an
even distribution of gardens, parks, and other large green areas. These are, in
turn, connected by boulevards, esplanades, and green belts. All these
elements, along with suburban forests and bodies of water, form a single
unified system. Existing greenery is preserved as best as possible.

In a modern city, landscaping is concentrated in residential areas (in courtyards

formed by groups of houses, in the gardens of residential areas and
microraions[neighborhood units]) and near schools and other children’s
institutions. These basic landscaping projects are supplemented by landscaping
on a city-wide and raion-wide basis. This includes the landscaping of parks of
culture and recreation, children’s parks, sports parks, other specialized parks,
squares and boulevards, the grounds of industrial, utility, and warehouse
enterprises, transportation rights-of-way, preserves, and water conservation
areas. Green areas in the suburban zone are a component part of the
landscaping of a large city. They provide the population with opportunities for
mass recreation in a natural surrounding and help to improve the city’s air
basin.
The nature of the landscaping done in various population centers is
determined by geographic location, local climatic conditions (precipitation,
temperature, wind velocity and direction, sunlight), and the natural terrain
(existing forest areas, topography, soil, location of bodies of water). The size,
economic specialization, and layout of a city or settlement also determine the
nature of landscaping. All aspects of landscaping are encountered in large
cities, while only some are found in rural areas, settlements, and small towns.
However, both in large cities and in rural areas, protective green areas are
essential between the residential and production zones.

In the southern regions of the USSR, the main tasks of urban landscaping are to
provide shade and to protect the streets, squares, and residential courtyards
and buildings from overheating. In the northern regions, the main purpose is
to protect the population centers from cold winds and snowdrifts. In major
industrial centers, greenery is needed to provide aeration. In resort towns an
abundance of parks and landscaped esplanades is needed to accommodate the
large number of vacationers from out of town.

The actual form of urban landscaping depends on the nature of the city and its
terrain. Riverside cities, such as Kiev and Budapest, often have a strip of parks
located along the river. Such coastal cities as Baku and Odessa normally have a
broad belt of seaside parks and esplanades. Large, densely populated cities
frequently have forest park wedges that link the center of the city with the
countryside. Such parks exist in Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Washington,
Copenhagen, and Oslo.

Some new cities that have been built in forest areas have plantings that form
an almost solid background for housing complexes, public centers, transit lines,
and pedestrian areas (the worker settlement of Sosnovyi Bor in Leningrad
Oblast, the science town of the Siberian Division of the Academy of Sciences of
the USSR near Novosibirsk). For new cities located in steppe, semidesert, and
desert regions, buffer zones of greenery are particularly important. For
example, in Karaganda, Navoi, Omsk, and Shevchenko, such zones protect
developed areas from prevailing winds.
Landscaped recreational areas for an urban center are made up of forested
areas, groves, groups of trees and shrubs, lanes, hedges, thickets, lawns, flower
beds, and vines. An important task is to create an organic relationship between
the greenery and the natural and artificial bodies of water, the terrain, and the
architecture.