Analysis of the Role of Communicative Approach Concepts in Urban Design Process (Case Study: Iranian Urban Design Projects)

With the advent of the communicative approach, urbanism knowledge has taken a critical approach to attract social, moral, and participatory ideas and theories, and has been introduced as an interdisciplinary knowledge dealing with political and social struggles. However, these developments have often taken place in the field of urban planning knowledge and are less explicitly discussed in the context of urban design knowledge and the urban design process.

The main purpose of this study is to identify the basic concepts of communicative approach, and examine the application of these concepts in urban design projects in Iran.

In the first step, by reviewing the critical theories affecting the communicative approach, the basic concepts and it’s application in the process of urban design are set to form a conceptual framework. The developed conceptual framework provides a basis for analysis and evaluation of selected projects in the next step by using direct qualitative content analysis method.

87% of communicative approach categories in selected projects are in a “Strongly Disagree situation”, and 13% are in a “Disagree situation”. Accordingly, the problem-finding and problem-solving process in projects focuses only on the technocratic aspects of space, and the decisive role of concepts of the communicative approach in how the urban design process is navigated is neglected. This is what separates the country's urban design process from the people and degrades experts to the level of tools at the disposal of the power to change the urban space.

The communicative approach with re-formulating the relationship between space, designer, people and the institution of power, in addition paying attention to the technical and creative dimensions of space, introduces critical aspects of urban planning knowledge into the urban design process. Thus, space design is considered as the product of processes in which competing discourses maximize their understanding of interests in a process based on communicative action and accept the multiple interests in the field of space, configuring space in a participatory and multilevel process.