Journal of Environmental Studies
Year:2003 | Volume:29 | Issue:SPECIAL ISSUE|Papers Count:9

The study of the evolution of cities' entrances during time represents the social, cultural, political and economic changes, which had their implications on the settlement patterns. The spatial-physical structure of the entrances of today's cities and mega polis may be used as an evidence. The transformation of entrance spaces in old cities from defined gates, walls, and fortifications into entrance corridors, with speared residential complexes, industries, military uses, warehouses, junkyards, oil change shops, etc. in less than 100 years reflect the significant changes which are rooted in the uncontrolled growth of the cities. The undesirable environmental conditions of the entrance spaces of most cities and their adverse impacts on residents and new comers, on the one hand, and the role environmental design can play in the promotion of environmental quality, on the other, are the reasons why this study is taken up the protection and promotion of environmental and visual quality of cities' entrances as the research goal. In this study, first the entrances in traditional architecture and entrance spaces of old Iranian cities are investigated, as well as, the relationship between function and structure of city entrances and residents; desires and the capabilities of this space to meet the citizens' needs in the past. In the next phase, the characteristics of a few Iranian city entrances, considering the two criteria of, tourism and climate, are studied and the relationship between the city and the external spaces at enterances are analyzed. On the basis of these characteristics, and also some useful and renewable characteristics of entransces of old cities, patterns are developped to make link between the urban spaces with external environment. At eventually by using the findings of these studies and also by looking at the similar experiences in Iran and in the USA, design criteria and objectives are developed for the city enterances.

In this essay, first the significance of the language and its role in developing, protecting and continuity of the culture and identity are explained. Second, since the persian language achievements in transmission of meaning and conceptual systems in the filed of design of the green spaces, is based on cosmological patterns, this is also described. Persian language has many words to name natural and built green spaces, which are based on Iranian history, culture and easthetics. These words are nowadays being neglected. In this essay, the words used to name green space in persian language are presented. By this, we are trying to show a new way to read and interprete built environmental elements in Iran, particularly, urban green spaces. This kind of seeing and reading the environments may help to solve some of problematic and unknown dimensions of planning and design, of urban green spaces in Iran.

Environment and Landscape in their natural settings, both are comprising of elements. These elements have a special meaning to their users and viewers. Obviously most of these components are the product of two ways of thinking; tradition of experts and tradition of public. Juxtaposition of these two types of natural and physical elements have formed human settlement structures. These structures in their turn convey those concepts and meanings which belong to the past and current way of life of the living man kind. Cultural and historical background also have been greatly involved in the shaping of these structures. In principle, landscapes and their elements are the language patterns, the language of native. Among the patterns, urban patterns consists of two main features, features that have been protected, because of their architectural and historical values, and element that have a short period of life and due to changes have been replaced constantly, changes in human behavior. His/her desire and more importantly significant change in technology. Regarding this veiw, it is fair to say that landscape and particularly urban landscape would never be accomplished. But, question is how we encounter with unavoidable changes, as the public, educational institutions and executive agents and responde to the ever changing environment, in order to maintain a pleasant environment.

This study endeavors to seek relationship between urban spaces (in particular urban parks) and social pathology (in this case addiction). The aim of this study is to propose a manner in which the spatio- physical quality of parks would improve in relation to the wide spread of addiction as an important socail issue, and expansion of drug abuse and increase in the activity of drug dealers from private spaces to public ones, especially parks. By rejecting the environmental determinism in creating behavioural patterns, this study would seek a design application to provide a suitable context in which positive public behaviors are increased and abnormal ones limited. After investigating literature and applicable results in environmental psychology and crime prevention through environmental design, recongnition and analysis of the physical space of case studies and observation and recording of the specific group, design patterns in relation to exiting urban parks" conditions would be presented. Proposed patterns, in contrast to approaches resulting in extreme changes in landscaping, are focused on "adaptibility and flexibility" to afford different stable behavioular patterns, increase the possibility of normative behaviors and thus decrease the abnormal ones.

With attention to the undeniable relationship of every type of environmental formation, such as environmental and landscape design with the concept of art, as well as, spiritual concepts of beauty, aesthetics in landscape design, which indeed deals with the philosophical and theoretical bases of landscape design, has a considerable importance. Since, in many cases the main concentration is on the manifests and quantities, or in some cases the philosophical background of the Iranian culture is neglected. This article endeavors to introduce foundations of aesthetics in landscape design, specially in Iranian ones. These foundations would be expressed in a framework of criteria which is defined by the Iranian culture. In other words, the manifestation of landscape beauty is a specific type of beauty which is beyond the optical and material beauty, and indicates spiritual and intellectual acpects of beauty. In response to these aims the following titles would be discussed:* Introduction,* Theoretical bases that deals with fourfold causes,* Definition of relevant terms,* Attributes of landscape aesthetics including two main subjects: firstly philosophical and theoretical bases of beauty (such as abstraction, moderation, remembrance and guidance, meaning and spirituality, harmony, unity and identity) and secondly their material manifestations (hierarchy, symmetry, boundary, inward- looking, symbolism, simplicity, purity, proportion, diversity and so on), and * Conclusion that introduces a summery of the discussion and suggestions.

Historical gardens, as a national heritage and the worthy statement of historic and cultural identity, clearly illustrate the entire relations among civilization and nature. The art of garden designing in Persia has been mostly reflected on the subtle articulation of plant, water, architecture and the way in which they are interrelated. Thus in attitude towards the historical gardens as a trace of the past in the city, it seems vital to reconsider the garden constantly, due to environmental, aesthetic and cultural values. In this article; the Tehran's gardens during Qajar period, which are about 80 to 200 years old, are investigated. Based on the present research, the gardens of this era are disappearing and just a few is remained. If such established procedure is prolonged for city development it will consequently lead to complete destruction of these gardens. Identification of the gardens of this era throughout the city, and recognition of their structural elements and criteria and the cause for their development in Elborz Mountain foothills were the main aims of this research.Furthemore, this investigation has been possible through detailed inspection of documents, including historical texts, intineraries, political personalities, reminiscences, graphics, drawings, photographs and paintings collected in archives and authentics museums. The results of this investigation have been utilized by analytical methods in order to measure the dominant structure in the garden: water, plant and architecture.The findings of this research whitin a historical document of scarce Tehran gardens would be available for improvement and renovation of valuable Qajar period's gardens.

The scholarly works on urban history have yielded many views on urban origins and many definitions for the city. These are ranging from ecological thesis to religo-political views and from purely form-based to the functional structure. These studies while provide valuable accounts on the development of urban form; they overlook the socio- cultural dimension of the city. The city is the physical product of the people's social, religious and economic activities. This paper, first classifies the historical views on urban origins and urban morphology. It then discusses approaches to urban studies that focus not only at from but also at the processes, which influence shaping the city. Finally it advocates that an understanding of social, political, and economic environment of the urban community is the key issue in achieving a sustainable and coherent form.

The issue of the relationship between space and society is one which has been ignored in the studies of both space masters (i. e. architects, urban and landscape designers, theoreticians and researchers in this filed), and society experts (i, e. sociologists, anthropologist and so on) Environmental sciences have largely filed to present a convincing theoretical framework for society, and similarly, in social sciences the concept of space and built environment has not reached a persuasive level. This failure is a missing link which is hard to deal with, but if tackled, it undoubtedly addresses many unknown problems of the built environment. In environment sciences, there has been an effort in the past few decades to approach society in a more sensitive way. This has brought new interests in studies of built environment to pay more attention to understanding the views of sociologists on the subject of space, In this paper, however, there is n intention to focus on the relation between society and environment form the standpoint of sociology and anthropology. This is an attempt to establish a foundation for further pursuit of the missing links between spatio- environment concepts and their social counterparts by focusing of the ideas of a few prominent sociologist and anthropologists, and comparing them to contemporary thoughs on the relationship between space and society. The paper concludes that unless a new understanding of space- society is a achieved, the effort in this filed would suffer from a constant lack of an appropriate framework.