Analysis of the destruction of urban gardens and green spaces in the urban development process

This article aims to determine ratio and trend of gardens and urban green spaces destruction in the city of Maragheh in recent decades and analyze effective factors on destruction and changing of land use of gardens and urban green spaces and finally investigation of effective factors on preservation of gardens and urban green spaces in garden city of Maragheh. In this research level and reasons for destruction of green spaces of Maragheh during years 1994 to 2006 and land use changing or preserved spaces have been investigated. The research is comparative and analytical. The data were collected by library and measuring method. In this relation، in addition to documentation of urban plans the researched lands (190 usage change cases) have been investigated. The statistical population involves total city district، residence population، gardens and urban green spaces inside the city and connected to the district that are under changing of usage. The research location is Maragheh as the center of city and second city of the east Azarbaijan province by area of 2500 hectare involving population equals to 151486 persons in 2006 (Iran censuses center، 2006) that is successful in preservation as Maragheh national park in spite of encountering to destruction of gardens phenomenon. Accordingly the gardens located in west part of the city by area of 91 hectare have been changed to city great park in order to preservation according to paragraph 15 approved in commission of article 5 of province in 1995/9/13 and the mentioned district has been established by increase to 125 hectare as national park usage outside of the city district in new master plan. This research was conducted during1994 to 2006 based on time of preparation of two master plans of the city and the mentioned documents and findings of these plans have been used for study. Adjacent of Maragheh to agricultural gardens has provided the context for urban expansion inside and outside of the gardens and in some cases it has been led to surrounding of plots in the city that has been changed according to usage. These land use changing have been caused to reduction of gardens area from %18 in city district in 73 to %10 in 85. The investigations show that change of usage and destruction of the gardens and green spaces have done in two ways in Maragheh. The results indicate that %65. 5 of change of usage and destruction of the gardens and green spaces in Maragheh have been done by governmental organizations according to legal regulations and %32. 6 is because of illegal conduction of owners and %1. 9 is because of undefined reasons، that it is warn for specialists and policy makers of urban development for encountering to green spaces destruction in urban expansion trend. The other considered points it can be referred to effective factors in preservation during the studied years that a few spots of gardens and urban green spaces are seen on the map of the city that the reason for preservation is impossibility of destruction of them.