فهرست مطالب ahmad ali namdarian

The concept of urban form encounters numerous uncertainties. It finds applications in various discussions within architecture, urbanism, and environmental design. However, its meaning is often assumed rather than clearly defined. Urban studies are typically divided into two main categories: architectural and urban historians, and geographers. Yet, these groups often fail to explain the reasons for changes in urban form. Understanding the factors that shape urban form requires a new theoretical framework. The philosophy of science can assess and categorize existing studies while offering a fresh definition. This article aims to classify urban studies through content analysis and library research. The paper demonstrates that previous studies have predominantly embraced a "positivistic" and "critical rationalism" approach, which tends to reduce the ontological nature of urban form to its epistemology. Critical realism can illuminate the hidden mechanisms underlying the urban form, leading to the introduction of the term "influential forces" to represent these concealed mechanisms. In other words, focusing solely on the dimensions of form presents a limited perspective; attention should be given to causal factors in urban form studies. These influential forces can provide insights into causality.

Karaj was just a small town in the 1920s. in the 1950s, it was populated by fifteen thousand. However, now it is between the four biggest cities in Iran and populated more than 1.600.000. The various forces that have changed this city are not so well- studied. These forces also contain an important part of modern development history. This article is going to investigate these forces through historical study. This research has an explorative- explanative goal. It is going to investigate the forces that transform Karaj. These forces are not so clear. For achieving these goals, inductive and reproductive strategy are used. Necessary data are collected from social products for secondary analysis. These data are mostly collected through content analysis of various urban plans and historical sources during history. The data were analyzed by historical study. Karaj has some historic buildings dating back to two thousand years ago. This city has been originated just beside Alborz mountain and also the Karaj river. It has been located in a historical way which improves its importance. The transformation of Karaj has happened in some steps. For the first transformation, some channels were branched for irrigating agricultural land. Then these channels have played an infrastructure role in the development of Karaj. The atmosphere of Karaj and its nice weather, its short distance to the capital, and also the national transportation infrastructures make Karaj a focal point for palaces, industrial sites, and also some research institutes. during the 1950s, private investors build some industrial sites in Karaj. These sites have created a part of the Karaj structure. However, after the 1960s decisions of government on a national scale, Karaj has changed into an interesting site for new developments and absorbing rapid immigration. the investigation shows that power is the most important dimension in the transformation of Karaj. Centralization and industrialization policies of government consequent from these policies lead to the rapid transformation of Karaj in the last hundred years. The main dimensions of Karaj urban form are borders, centers, and differences affecting natural and political forces. The rapid development of Karaj produces a sort of social chaos which leads to a new phenomenon compared with the other main cities of Iran. In contrast with the other cities which have horizontal or vertical relations, Karaj experiences neighboring relations. The neighbor relation is the consequence of locating various groups just beside each other. Social division in Karaj does not have a rigid border as the other cities may have. However, the segregation of different groups is widespread in all parts of the city. There are so many neighborhoods that are constructed around different centers such as industrial facilities. Following the development of Karaj, these developments come around each other and many brownfields also remain between these developments. Resulting high amount of immigration, there are so many informal neighborhoods inside and outside of the city. These informal parts lead to dispersing the city and also produces so many social problems for Karaj. These non-harmonization developments, also reflect on the physical form of Karaj.

Natural factors are among essential dimensions that shape a city and guide its development. Mountains, rivers, coastlines and valleys are among these factors. Water supply, among others, has an important role in the life and flourishing of a city. In every settlement, the solution to this is considered a part of its urban culture. The Zayandeh-Rud River has been a significant element which has guided the urban development of Isfahan throughout different periods. However, the way of this impact has not yet been adequately investigated. The network of madis is considered one of the most important parts of the Zayandeh-Rud River, which has influenced the development of Isfahan. This network had affected the initial location of Isfahan; the direction of urban development; the structure of the historical core and the Bazaar route; the location of the Safavid governmental quarters; the location of new quarters particularly in the Safavid period; the irrigation of suburban gardens; the underground water levels used for residential purposes, and etc. At first, madis were used for irrigating agricultural lands. Later, however, they connected and formed the initial urban core of Isfahan. Specifically, the madi of Fadin functioned as infrastructure in the development of the spatial organization of Isfahan. The research employs the content analysis method and interpretive-historical approach. Information is analyzed through documentary and library research. Studies demonstrate that following a booming population growth in the Safavid period, new madis were built according to the new urban structure. The network of madis has had great influence on the design of the Safavid governmental quarters, as well as on other urban quarters and key facilities. Before the Safavid period, the urban development of Isfahan was mainly influenced by natural forces, specifically the Zayandeh-Rud River and its network of madis. However, during the Safavid period, there were plural forces which guided the urban development of Isfahan. Finally, a map of madis is re-drawn based on documentary and comparative studies of the historical maps of Isfahan showing the location of the main buildings and the relation of the spatial organization of pre-Safavid Isfahan with the network of madis.

City view can be considered as the embodiment of cityscape and affects social and economic values. Historical cities in Iran and Europe have had a kind of harmony between physical and social fabrics which in turn shows what great attention has been paid to skyline and its details. Nowadays, however, fast-occurring changes inhibit the linking of social character and physical fabric and giving rise to extraversion. The only thing observable in general these days is fabrics with no identity containing monotonous space or highly visionary chaos. This article tries to address various reasons that affect the shaping of cities and their skylines through the thematic study of some reasons such as supernatural or ideological, secular, natural, technological, administrative, economic and social reasons. Based on the chronological studies, Primary cities were more or less influenced by supernatural and then secular or natural reasons. Due to these reasons, they tend to have an organic fabric and a kind of harmony in their skylines. It is observable that in this era, the most important parts of a city are the most public ones. It is by no means difficult to distinct public spaces due to their hierarchical organization. In the next section, through a critical point of view, modern and pre modern skylines are compared. Modern skyline, which has emerged with modern notions as a symbol of speed and the machine era, is being influenced by economic and capitalistic reasons. In this era we deal with the “reification of skyline”. City skyline has been sacrificed by the economic power of these reasons and, as a result, it has lost its human scale as one of the important aspects of pre modern cities. A comparison between the pre-modern skyline and its successors shows that the reasons which affect city skylines have risen in the modern era. Following the logic of the modern era, many reasons separate themselves from metaphysics and monarchies, though this separation is uncontrolled. Modern era, however, is divided into three parts: Primarymodern, great-modern and post-modern eras. Due to the great improvement in technology, primary-modern cities could be regarded as machine cities. On the other hand, technology empowers classes which cannot be considered as independent till those times such as Fordism. Since that time, these classes have developed the ability to control capital and following that, they managed to affect the evaluations of cities. In the late modern era, economic power got stronger as neo-liberalism emerged and played a major role in the form of city skylines. Public spaces have gotten increasingly privatized. Due to all of these, the modern era is to be recognized as plural in reasons. Besides recognizing all the reasons shaping cities, it is essential to control the construction in a way that skyline turns to be the symptom of urban space. The Economic reason is to be controlled by the administrative and social reasons should be taken into account. As pre-modern cities, The Human scale can be already considered as the most important factor of our cities.

Every-day life of city residents includes a range of communication and social interactions. The size, density, and configuration of urban physical environment affect the psychological and social experiences and behaviors of urban dwellers. Citizen's familiarity with the location of residences is a result of education and experience, thus having different sense of place among people living in different cities is a result of different experience too. This paper aims to address the relationship between the accumulation of memories and perceptions on quality, image and vitality to the citizens. From this, managers, planners, urban designers and policy makers can be effective in improving the communication of citizens with their residence environment through participation of space users in formulating future development visions. As a geographical community, public space has a certain location in the urban structure. As a social community, public space is a meeting place for different purposes. Central to the notion of public space are its claims to be democratic and accessible. The meaning of places is defined through their identity and more specifically through the harnessing of the traditions, memories and historicity held of them. Social interaction connects public space to physical security. Many public realms in the city are time-dependent in their nature. During the daytime, market squares, parks and streets might be magnetic and inclusive urban areas, but during the nighttime they may turn into urban areas of fear. The urban landscape is something that we see, but it is also something that is produced by stories. There are many aesthetic, economic, emotional and nostalgic ties to the urban environment. Many meanings of signs and symbols are part of our history and identity. Human behaviour in urban space is influenced by subjective knowledge of the environment. It is possible to transfer this knowledge using such kinds of materials as novels, diaries, biographies, poems, photographs, paintings and films. These sources of material help to understand the deep, subjective and complex relationships between individuals, groups, places and landscapes. In this study, the Chamran Street in Shiraz was selected as the study area. Then the environmental factors affecting users in the form of memories were collected and analyzed. The reason of choosing Chamran was due to its importance in current and future urban identity of Shiraz, its dynamism, diversity of functions and activities, and its role on increasing urban vitality.The resultsindicated thatactivity and meaning are two more important factors those physical elements, so more attention is required to pay on these two via improving social-recreational activities. Any effort to improve physical environment should be accomplished with enriching diverse activities and empowering urban image and legibility for users. This would lead to enriching identity, collective memories, and livability.

Public space has always been a key research area across a wide spectrum of disciplines including philosophy, urban geography, visual art, cultural studies, social research and urban design and planning. Urban spaces play an important role in the social-economic life of city dwellers and throughout history cted as a center of communication and change. In modern era, public spaces in cities have turned into main business centers from which a particular section of the society is benefiting. This is the result of modernization and all the changes that it has brought about in the society. In fact, rationalization which is a product of the enlightenment era is limited to the rationality of approaches, evices and technology. This reflects a strain of rationality or «instrumental rationality», and it can be sought in the dialectics of man, society and nature the result of which is man’s struggle to overcome nature and then damage it to a great extent. These concerns are today reflected in debates pertaining to «sustainable development». The purpose of this paper is to discover the interactions and connections among the urban space, the sustainable development and the Communication Paradigm which is xpected to help explain the above three elements. In order to get there, the role of urban spaces throughout history has been studied particularly with regards to aspects such as society, economy and environmental concerns as emphasized by the principles of sustainable development. A historical review of urban space, its size as well as its production procedure could help better understand the role of urban spaces and the way it could improve sustainable development. This paper investigates the connection between the concepts of urban space and sustainable development using Communicative Action Theory. In this way, the Communication Paradigm as a basis for explaining this connection is described. Thus, using the theory of Communicative Action, the instrumental rationality of modernism has been brought into the spotlight. This theory questions the tenets of modern instrumental rationality and further presents Communicative Rational as a solution to overcome modern problems. This research studies how Communicative Rational is manifested through urban spaces. It has taken into consideration the fact that Communicative Rational could be an approach to overcome the logic of domination and profit as well as a solution to prevent whatever disrupts the orderliness of nature and its various elements as well as their interconnections. Eventually, the Communicative Paradigm is presented as a model based on which urban spaces can be developed based on the principles of sustainable development. This Paradigm will help determine the features of sustainable development and also ntroduce urban spaces as the beating hearts of cities. Further, it will help promote the social, economic and environmental roles of cities by determining an appropriate set of discourse ethics for urban spaces.

The city is the accumulation and integration of many individual and small group actions governed by cultural traditions and shaped by social and economic forces over time. The fabric and structure of today's city are outcomes of a process which has started many years ago and was shaped by numerous forces included historical, administrative, economic, political and social forces. Throughout history, design of streets and deliberate configuration of public spaces with buildings have reflected contemporaneous social norms or philosophical and religious beliefs. Yet the relation of designed urban space and human mind appears to be bidirectional. Indeed, the reverse impact of urban structure upon human behavior and upon thought is evidenced by both observational study and historical record. The fabric and structure actually have been working very well during the history; therefore, the city has been responsive for the needs and desires of inhabitants. On the other hand today's city fabric and image indicate heterogeneous in several aspects. In fact, a part of today's imbalance now appeared is due to inattention to such forces. As an example, beneficial commercial buildings have a little harmony and coincide with urban context and are of a contradictory relation with development plans. The ongoing dynamism of city changes makes it desirable for living. According the final researches, this paper gives an attempt to explain the forces in detail. It is believed that the quality of urban space is affected by how the forces interact together during the time. In this way, urban space could be described as the context of forces dialectic. This idea notices to the definition of “discourse” referring to Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action. The hypothesis of this paper is that for achieving a high quality urban space, it is required to make the context ready to welcome communication among diverse forces. To prove the hypothesis, some evidence from Iranian old cities is provided. To have a good design, it is required to employ the effects of all driving forces. Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public spaces. Urban Design, in fact, is an activity that has an important role to play in delivering and safeguarding many of the aspirations that civilized societies hold dear - environmental sustainability, social equity, cultural diversity and economic prosperity. Therefore, urban designers should recourse from other professions included planners, economists, sociologist and urban managers. In fact, it requires a good understanding of a range from others besides, such as real estate development, urban economy, political economy, and social theory. The design, construction and management of public spaces therefore typically demands consultation and negotiation across a variety of spheres. Urban designers rarely have the degree of artistic liberty or control that sometimes offered in designing professions such as architecture. It also typically requires interdisciplinary input with balanced representation of multiple fields including engineering, ecology, sociology and transport planning. The scale and degree of detail considered various depending on context and needs.