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The world忆s population is becoming urbanized as people migrate to the cities. It is expected that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries during the next decades. One of the major effects of rapid urban growth is " urban sprawl冶 that increases traffic, saps local resources and destroys open space. Urban sprawl is responsible for changes in the physical environment, and the form as well as spatial organization of cities. Urban ecosystems not only provide recreational and aesthetic values, but tangible benefits of clean air and water, conservation and reuse of natural resources, increased biodiversity, and other products that increase the livability of our communities. Creating sustainable urban ecosystems involves optimizing landscape constructions based on considerations that are ecological and social. The main goal of urban planning is to make all amenities and comforts available to the public without imposing many negative effects on society and environment, referred to as " sustainable growth 冶. Therefore, urban ecological landscape is drawing wide attention. Developing ecological landscapes will be capable of contributing to the advancement of technological and scientific solutions that can address the grand challenges of urbanization. However, there are lots of problems in existing urban ecological projects owing to lack of uniform guidelines and evaluation indicators of ecological landscapes. Therefore, it is important to build evaluation indicators used to guide urban ecological landscape construction. This paper reviews the progresses of ecological landscape research and summarizes the essential characteristics of urban ecological landscapes.

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