نشریه نامه معماری و شهرسازی
سال یکم شماره 1 (پاییز و زمستان 1387)

Growth of sprawl particularly in metropolitan fringes has become as on of the complicated problems facing policy-making about spatial development in metropolitan regions. The present paper is aiming at examining and analyzing different socio-economic and political factors which impact on increasing sprawl in the framework of rival theories. It seems that obtaining an effective policy instrument for spatial development and its control, is not possible without recognition of sprawl factors, its mechanisms and impacts. Various research indicate that those factors such as existence of cheap land in urban fringes, weak control enforcement in outer areas of municipalities borders on land development, priority of suburban lifestyle particularly resulting from degradation of quality of life in core city, increase in private car ownership and development of public transit facilities, market failure of assessing total value of spaces, social costs of crowding into these areas, and specially political fragmentation have great influences on formation and fortification of sprawl in metropolitan regions.

Urban planners and designers as well as architects are the main designers and decision makers of the urban environment today, whilst the public are the main users of those spaces without having any share in this regard. Having knowledge about the appropriateness of the urban spaces from the people’s point of view and knowing the preferences of the users can be helpful in designing a better environment. A large number of studies carried out in the field of environmental psychology indicate a considerable difference between the attitudes of environmental designers and that of other groups of people regarding the evaluation of specific characteristics of the specified environment. Since most of these pieces of research have been carried out in other countries, it is not reasonable to generalize their results to our country, thus the investigation in Iranian context is necessary. This study is a comparison between environmental designers and the public’s views on urban identity and the main environmental elements which enhance such identity. The study is concentrating on Shemiran area located in the north of Tehran. The people’s viewpoints were gathered through a questionnaire and those of experts were asked through face to face interviews on the basis of a series of structured questions. The results indicate that, in contrast to the findings of similar studies conducted in the western countries, there is consensus and similarities between different groups of the people and experts’ respondents on their evaluation of the environment.

Today, attention to the urban public spaces as an essential issue in urban planning shows the very important role of these places in the socio-cultural dimensions of cities. Literature review shows that many books and papers have been published in Iran on this topic in order to create suitable public spaces for special social groups such as disables, the elderly and children but not for women. Since all citizens have equal rights to access and to be able to use public urban spaces, therefore, creating comfortable spaces for different gender and age groups is very important, specially in countries like Iran where certain Islamic laws are implemented. In this paper, we define the meaning of public space in such context and then examine women’s perceptions and experiences of urban public spaces in Iran. Using this definition and considering the importance of these spaces in cities combined with the indicators used for indexing successful urban spaces in the world, we examined the utility and usability of urban spaces for women in Iran (Nabbovat Sq. in Tehran). Data was collected through a questionnaire and deep interview and analyzed using various statistical methods. This paper presents the key results of this research. Findings show that level of women’s utility and usability of urban public spaces is independent from some variables such as: age, education, marriage status, distance to the urban space, and so on, but has significant correlation with other variables like: social interaction, safety and security, space accessibility, design, space identity, social supervision, willingness to participate, comfort and image, sociable space, activities. Among defined variables, sociability and social supervision are of the greatest importance.

Public spaces are the places in which public daily life occurs and they change over time based on socio-economic and cultural changes of the society. Public spaces are the spaces for a variety of activities and considering the socio-cultural characteristics of societies provide activity space for different demographic groups based on age, gender, and other characteristics. One of the major aims of urban design is improving the user’s quality of life through equipping urban environment, with appropriate open spaces to accommodate all age and occupations as well gender groups. Good design and provision of necessary facilities would accommodate the variety of functions and users and would create a more attractive, meaningful and livable urban living environment. This study is based on the belief in women’s equal rights of presence and use of public urban open spaces and acknowledges their presence in such spaces. It also believes in gender equity regarding access to space as an inclusionary approach in use of them. This research is also focuses on the theory of “Ethics of Care”. This theory studies women’s experience in public space and is based on an inclusionary approach. The goal of this paper is defining the importance of women’s presence in urban spaces through specifying supportive activities and functions in urban open spaces. Since women’s place of presence (activity space) has historically been in or near home, it seems that neighborhood open spaces are in close relation with their daily life; especially in Iranian culture, neighborhood spaces have been in deep relation with women’s needs. Finally the factors that effect women’s use of physical places are determined and recommended for consideration in design to promote presence of women in neighborhood open spaces to provide gender equity in use of space while maintaining ethics of care considered by women.

The hierarchy of social domains which is the product of historical experiences and socio-psychological conditions manifest itself in the urban fabric and architectural elements. Particularly, the physical dimension of the built environment is marked by physical landmarks which indicate the hierarchy of territories. In the process of architecture and urban design, recognition, evaluation and modeling of these domains is very important in creating a socially sustainable environment. In this article which is the product of a research study, the hierarchy of territories and the differences in the spatial values of these domains in neighborhood structure and architecture of traditional Iranian housing units is studied. For recognition of all physical dimensions of the territorial hierarchy, first the two old neighborhoods of Fahadan and Tal in the historic fabric of Yazd and five traditional houses are selected as case studies. In this study both phenomenology and space syntax is employed. The results of this research show that the geometric patterns and the contextual location of spaces are important in recognition of the territorial hierarchy. Also the impact of layers of private and public spaces on concentration or distraction of people in urban spaces and houses are revealed. The importance of thresholds as effective elements of passage from one domain to the other is clarified. A study of spaces utilizing space syntax technique clarified the hierarchy of domains in a precise graphical and mathematical form. The impact of architectural and urban elements and spaces on the hierarchy of domains is acknowledged. Then the mutual relationship of spaces according to the social logic is also clarified. At the end, the article concludes that morphological studies of city, neighborhood skeleton and architectural elements in the process of architectural and urban design are necessary to preserve and create hierarchical domains.

These days, the realization of development in Iran’s urban development plans, is one of the most considerd matters. Failure to gain the foreseen population in new towns can indicate a conflict between the users’ tendencies and the designated development plans in these towns. In this study, realization of development has been considered as the product of planning and design process and on the basis of a new approach called “marketing development”, new aspects of this development has been introduced. Corresponding criteria in marketing for development are presented in order to converging market development tendencies with sustainable development goals. Hashtgerd new town which has recently been successful in attracting foreign investment, is selected as case study, and the criteria and indexes of theoretical framework of “marketing development”, have been tested. The results illuminate that recent activities in this town to attract foreign investment is not rising from an intelligent planning discipline, within the development plan of the town.

Kashan Historical Houses are unique complexes of Iranian historical architecture. The aim of this essay is to study these houses (Ameris, Tabatabaees, Borujerdees, and Abasis) from a semiotic (structuralist, cultural and poststructuralist) approach. The representation of cultural aspects (such as privacy, security, power, status, and respect) in the light of “introverted” and “veiled” architecture is the focus of this study. In the second part of the essay, I will pay attention to two major binary oppositions in semiotics: inside and outside, and culture and nature. The theses proposed for both binary oppositions could be considered as new in many respects and will result in some poststructuralist or deconstructive readings of these historical houses and some observations on the concept of “home”. All the pictures used for this research are taken by the researcher.

Nowadays, globalization pays more attention to regional cultures than before. In addition to dogmatic approaches which interpret globalization as a product of western Imperialism, there are other viewpoints which accept cultural diversity and consider particular regional way of confronting globalization, as “Many Globalization”. Among all cultural issues, architecture as the symbol of culture plays an important role in a cultural perspective to globalization. The interaction between Architecture and culture, defined in human and built-environment relationships, challenges both theoretical and practical field of architecture. To confront this challenge effictively, it is more important to re-identifying both sides of this interaction, namely culture and architecture. Cultural context is represented by architecture. There are movements in the world that support cultural-based theory instead of modern standardized ones to revival sustainable cultural identity. This study, considers to have a deep look at human’s interactions theory, based on content analyzing research method. The suggestion is that if architectural discourse extends on global interaction, cross cultural relationships in science and art fields will be more accessable. The result is drawing a theoretical framework which organizes culture-architecture interaction to represent a new definition of identity and cultural–regional characteristics.