Urban development sometimes has negative impact on rivers. Landscape as one of the fields of development can be a gate to save rivers by regarding its needs. By pinpointing landscape around rivers, the paper aims to find out the main features that can be considered as a guide in urban development concerning rivers through both theoretical and analytical studies. In the theoretical study the paper discusses some questions such as: What are the contents of nature and their needs? What are the needs of rivers that have to be respected during urban development? What is the relationship between rivers and landscape? The study concludes an outline for landscape design to be a guide in developing urban with respect to rivers. Then the paper examines in the analytical study a guide outline resulted from the theoretical study, to measure the success or failure of urban development using a selection of rivers as samples.