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Thursday, November 17, 2011

THE ROLE OF PHYSICAL IDENTITY OF CITY IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY (THE CASE STUDY: YAZD,IRAN)

by NIKI TAVAKOLI

Tackling with environmental social-cultural urban crisis is one of the subjects that many cities are involved with it. Although in the past years changes and transformations in urban development occurred gradually and the facilities and variety of instruments, materials, and technology were limited, but dominant rules of urban planning and design led to ideal cities with harmonic , sustainable well-formed image and responsive spaces.
But nowadays in spite of growth and development of science and technology and creation of modern concepts in sustainable development, unfortunately we are tackling with increasing destruction, unfair and unstable cities. The lost of identity that plays a vital role in urban structure, is one of the problem of modern urban spaces. The importance of this concern is related to sociocultural and conceptual aspects of urban spaces as a context of urban life. Therefore urban sustainability is a challenge that not only should be considered from environmental concepts, but also both of its physical and conceptual aspects are important to present an integrative framework in urban planning and design.
Moreover one of the most effective ways to achieve a sustainable urban form is using physical identity characteristic and hidden feature of traditional cities in order to using their design pattern and updating them along modern movements.
Therefore, first, in this paper the role of identity in quality of city is considered and then some general physical indicators of sustainable city with an approach to traditional Iranian cities are presented .Secondly, one of the traditional sustainable cities, Yazd, as a case study is selected and analyzed according to its physical identity factors. Finally, this paper concludes the importance of sense of identity and physical elements in urban sustainability, particularly in traditional urban spaces.


A preserved part of the old defensive wall of Yazd, in northwest of the historical core
A preserved part of the old defensive wall of Yazd, in northwest of the historical core

Ab Anbar (traditional water reservoir) with four Badgirs (wind tower) in Yazd

Ab Anbar (traditional water reservoir) with four Badgirs (wind tower) in Yazd

A new residential complex in Yazd

more about Iran:

The Mechanism of Transformation of Shiraz City from Past to Present

Earthquake Management in Iran A compilation of literature on earthquake Management

Tehran and the challenges of a metropolis in the millennium

A GIS-based Traffic Control Strategy Planning at Urban Intersections

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