Ett grönt möte mellan eklandskapet och en ny stadsdel i Linköping

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to analyze and show possibilities how a city can grow into the scenery of a oak dominated landscape and how this encounter can add values to the city. The city in focus is Linköping, a city that is approaching one of Sweden's largest oak dominated cultural landscapes. To this landscape high ecological and cultural values are connected. The recreational values are also of importance especially because of its urban location also because the city is mainly surrounded by flat agricultural land. Djurgården is the district that is going to be established in the fringe of the oak landscape. In the comprehensive plan the municipality gives guidelines for the structure of this new urban area. Some of the analyzes in this essay starts from this proposed plan. The aim for this work is not to give a absolute solution, but more to give inspirations and ideas for the encounter between the city of Linköping and the oak dominated landscape. The focus of the work is to define characteristics of the landscape, qualities that could be valuable in a city. Climate changes and increased frequency of natural disasters shows the importance of our respect and adjustment to the nature. The protection of nature is encouraged when nature becomes a part of our everyday life, when we give nature a place in our consciousness. The landscape show different characters as wooded meadow, broadleaf forest and pasture land. The different environments all have in common the openness and light with a rich fauna and flora. This kind of environments demands grazing or cultivation to last. Djurgården is a part of the oak landscape, a landscape that shows a pattern of islands arising above flat agricultural field surface. The islands are overgrown with vegetation dominated by oak trees. This essay shows how a framework of a green city web could be achieved when these islands are tied together into paths and connect to existing urban green areas. A web that let the cultural landscape spread in between the blocks of the city. The web strengthens the biological values and the accessibility out in the landscape. The surrounding landscape become a part of the future Djurgården when integrate urban functions with the pattern of the oak landscape. Urban places in our everyday life could be designed with characters and values that is connected and interplays with the oak landscape. The visual contact between the places is of great importance, otherwise they will become isolated and no part of the matrix. "The deferens between living in the countryside and in the city is that there are living animals in the countryside, but in the city people are living." Translated from the book Gamla tanter lägger inte ägg, (Levengood, 2003). Maybe the difference between the city and the nature doesn't need to be so dramatically. Djurgården has the opportunity to demonstrate a city plan where the connection to the surrounding landscape is noticeable and taken care of also inside the area.