Designing Green Routes to Connect Natural-Historical Inner City Structures (Case Study: Shahr-e Rey)

With the increasing trend in the expansion of urban areas in recent years, in addition to the gradual decrease in the number of intra-city natural environments, the link between natural environments has also faded away in such a way that the inter-city natural environments are enclosed like some separated spots within the urban area. On the other hand, similar to natural environments, the inter-city historical places, known as the only traces left from previous civilizations, are at risk of destruction with their quality being degraded. As its major objective, the present article seeks to preserve and provide links among the natural and historical structures within and outside the urban areas, aimed at building a coherent and interlinked network of historical and natural structures. The study uses two environmental approaches, landscape and history, to have a comprehensive perspective towards both natural and historical structures. Methodology of the present study includes: data collection and analysis, specifying the natural and historical structures in Shahr-e Rey, matching the natural and historical structures to reach the major links between them with the purpose of creating green routes, defining the major green routes and finally defining a natural-historical network. To accomplish the research objective, Shahr-Rey was selected as the sample of the study as it is a historical city with thousands of years of civilization and numerous natural potentials including green and open spaces within and outside its urban area. The article concludes by offering a strategic plan to create a network of green routes linking history to nature both to preserve the natural and historical intra-city structures and to create a unified and coherent network between the two.