Reply to the "Scientific Critique and the Critique of Structural-Functional Dynamic Approach"

Different approaches to spatial planning are a way to make our surrounding world meaningful. The Structural-Functional Dynamic approach (SFDA) has recently been articulated within the context of Iranian geographers to provide an alternative meaning for spatial planning concerning the socio-spatial context of Iran. We have interpreted some methodological aspects of this approach in Structural-Functional Dynamics Approach to Spatial Planning ("planning") published in Spatial Planning journal in 2016. The main argument was that the conceptualization of the two essential concepts of space and man in SFDA needs to be revised based on consistent assumptions. Although SFDA, following humanism, has rejected objectivism, an elitist top-down spatial planning, the idea of threshold in the neoclassical economy, and universal laws of human behavior, it reproduced them due to its tendency to positivism and the paradigm of geography as a spatial science. In 2018, the author of SFDA in scientific critique and the critique of the Structural-Functional dynamic approach ("Scientific Critique") criticized the way of interpretation presented in planning because of the incorrect translation and misinterpretation of scientific texts, the secondary referencing; and the misunderstanding of the concepts articulated in SFDA. The present article aimed to clarify arguments and interpretations presented in the planning to reply to the Scientific Critique