A Theoretical Model for Conflict Management-Driven Urban Contemporization in Urban Historic Areas; Case Study: Historic City of Rey

Urban historic areas as a living witness of the history of the past and the main factor in collective identity are dealing with dialectic conflict of "development" and "conservation" that leads to different types of conflicts especially secondary ones. Confrontation of conservation and contemporary needs of the residents is one of the challenging issues. So, this paper tries to analyze conflicts toward planning of urban historic in order to define a new conceptual framework for achieving conflict management-driven urban contemporization.This study has been done based upon qualitative paradigm and the required data have been collected by using snowball sampling, document analysis and in-depth interviews. Analyzing conflict toward planning of urban historic areas has been done based upon grounded theory and bridging conflict management and urban contemporization done based on logical argumentation.Findings show that the weakness of conservation planning and management system of the historic areas and the inefficiency of planning and management system of development in such areas at decision-making level are the main factors in the confrontation of development and conservation that lead to the emergence of secondary conflicts at operational level. In case of conflict management, it will be possible to combine two concepts of conflict management and urban contemporization.Managing conflict between development and conservation can be resulted in achieving conservation-led integrative development as a factor of urban contemporization. Therefore, protecting heritage values along with supplying modern needs of residents can be achievable.