Abstract
Over the last half century, Qatar has witnessed an excessive change on its economic and urban evolution. From coastal village where fishing and pearling were the main activities of its community to a country with ambitious vision for the future. Due to economic booming of oil / gas discovery early 1940, Qatar urban context drastically changed as urbanization process has been accelerated. As our economy, populations and community grow over time, a rapid urban development rates have been accelerate and the consequent negative environmental and climatic impacts on our cities are accelerated as well especially with high land demands for housing, commercial, mixed uses , transportation and community facilities uses. In addition, on 2 December 2010, FIFA appointed Qatar as the host for WORLD CUP 2022.Such factor imposed even further economic prosperity and rapid urban growth rates over the last decade. During such rapid urban development process and the associates challenges to create liveable environment was of high priority to Qatar National Master Plan. Hence, greater attention needed to be placed on the landscape design of our outdoor open spaces to ensure that they contribute in the creation of vibrant, healthy and liveable cities. Qatar National Development Framework addressed the strategic importance to establish Qatar National Landscape design guidelines (QNLDG). One of the main principles of the project is to cover the holistic approach of landscape and how it is imperative to understand that landscape is not merely trees-related nor city beautifications. It is one of the principal mediums to organize and shape urban places. It creates character and identity of places, and it is of multi-scale approach that operates at any level, both in regional and local scale. Qatar landscape design guidelines encourage the use of landscaping to address many of the existing challenges of the urban environment by providing a national reference and guide on what constitute as good place-making practice for Qatar context including beautification, shading, reduction of urban heat-island effect, natural habitat, soil stabilization, visual perception and many other aspects .The guidelines was established based on extensive benchmark for world best practices in landscape design as well as deep analysis for Qatar’s unique characteristics and challenges. A key objective of the guidelines is to meet these challenges while also conserving valuable water, energy and other natural resources in Qatar’s arid desert climate. Qatar landscape design guidelines report in conclusion is organized into six main chapters focusing on landscape urbanism as an integral part of the city-making process, where everything apart from buildings are associated and treated as ‘landscape’. Landscape urbanism in this context covers all: open spaces, movement corridors, streets, alleyways, parks, plazas, waterfronts, green corridors, street furniture, front spaces of plots, fences, pavements, trees, soft cape elements, and many other design elements, that are located within urban areas. The Guidelines demystify the interrelationship of three main design elements of place-making: landscape, built form and movement. The QLSDG is a toolkit for all those involved with urban design issues, at any level, in Qatar where landscape was introduced as one of the main indicators to judge the most livable cities. The case study report / presentation will elaborate the adopted framework in further details addressing all lesson learnt to achieve human-centric and multi-scale landscape design guidelines to create Liveable, sustainable and inclusive urban environment
