Environmental impact study in application of a lake-shore holiday village planning

Abstract

A new holiday village will be located by the Fleesensee lake of Silz district in Germany. It is proposed to serve travelers and citizens for boating and water sports. The existing planning plan will interrupt local environment due to an indiscriminately transformation of the landscape. Though Environment Landscape Convention (ELC) provides designers a reference for planning policies and tools, there is still a gap between researches and planning practices. Planning plans are always carried out based on designer’s personal inclination into the landscape and results in an impossible prediction of change for the landscape and locals. This paper presents a process of using the Environmental impact study (EIS) as a tool to set up a temperate planning plan for the holiday village. Two steps were evolved: landscape interpretation and landscape evaluation. In the first step, multidisciplinary data of the site was collected. Parameters consist of nature and cultural elements were mapped out. Based on the characteristics and identities of the landscape, the second step was rating, overlaying and analyzing parameters according to their protective function. By calculating the environmental net loss and gain, the validity and reliability of the study could be verified. The compliment of EIS can explicitly demonstrate a reasonable decision making process based on respecting existing site condition. The result will indicate the protective area and the new potential design boundary of the site. From the results of the study, a new planning boundary has been put froward to compensating ecology loss by creating new habitats and corridors. Two goals have been attained by the new planning plan: (1) minimal deconstruction of the site; (2) 13.3 ha of additional biotopes was created.