Naturalistic renovate; Renovating nature approaches in Santa Cruz city

Human manipulation in his habitat with the goal of achieving a place has consequently caused some changes in the pristine nature. It is obvious that people are away from their environment in formation of their cities and the relation and connection of people and nature has dwindled in built environment. Due to the formation of this big gap which is caused by human, amplifying the existence of nature in urban spaces is quite essential in urban landscape. An appropriate relation of nature as a whole and city as a compartment must be provided in urban spaces.
Juan Manuel Palerm, a Spanish landscape architect, profoundly considers nature an important factor in landscape design. He tries to recreate the lost nature within the cities by the use of designing landscape in the city structure. He declares that the concept of landscape can be introduced through researching its identity. He believes that creating public spaces by renovating the historic nature of the city will provide a readable and distinctive place within the city.
He has been able to showcase his ideas of using nature to the city structure in Santos road and the Garcia Sanabria Park renovation. Santa Cruz de Tenerife has drawn Palerm’s attention due to its historic background and having a natural valley which can be considered a focal point in relating human and nature. In his projects of renovating Santa Cruz spaces, his approach of providing a correlation between the city and the nature which enables both to penetrate through each other’s boundaries is prevailing. Renovating the historic fabric of the city by creating public spaces where the city and nature are combined and the green infrastructure enables a sustainable city and promotes the environmental quality are his main ideas behind his projects. Considering the approach of nature penetration into the city, Palerm had a significant role in renovating the Santos road landscape. This road is an ecological boundary which enables the environmental, social and ecological sustainability in the city as well as promoting the life quality within the city by adding essential functionalities to improve the quality of recreational places. In this way the amount of environmental destruction is reduced and the augmentation of the sense of security gives an identity and authenticity to the city. In the project of Garcia Sanabria Park which was designed by the idea of city penetrating into the densely surrounded nature, he has created a place for daily activities of the citizens by designing walking, reading and recreational places as well as omitting the barriers which separates the parks from the city. He designs various paths (intersective and curved ones) in his parks, in this way he features different experiences of spaces for the visitors. Indeed, he uses the landscape as a tool to achieve the goals in creating social and cultural spaces.