Journal of Iranian Architecture & Urbanism(JIAU)

Abstract Extended Abstract
Background and Objectives: The formation of the urban landscape, as a reflection of a city’s culture and identity, involves both objective and subjective dimensions. In recent years, urban planning in Iran has encountered difficulties in managing the urban landscape. The failure to implement urban projects effectively highlights the absence of control and visual guidance regulations, which serve as tools for urban policies, thereby complicating efforts to address urban landscape issues. Comprehensive research has not yet focused on identifying and ranking the semantic-identity challenges of Iran’s urban landscape. Although numerous studies have explored urban landscapes, a comprehensive approach to categorizing, prioritizing, and addressing these challenges has been largely overlooked, forming the basis for this research. The overall goal of this study was to identify and rank the challenges of Iran’s urban landscape based on expert opinions.
Methods: This research adopted a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative components, to thoroughly identify and prioritize the semantic-identity challenges of the urban landscape in Iran. A comprehensive and focused search was conducted across domestic and international databases, as well as reputable publications in landscape architecture, using relevant keywords such as “landscape,” “urban landscape,” “urban image” (visual aspect of landscape), and “historical and contemporary landscape.” A total of 256 articles were collected, and more than 40 domestic and international studies from the past decade were carefully selected for further analysis. Content analysis of these studies was performed to extract the semantic-identity challenges facing Iran’s urban landscape. The identified challenges were categorized using the “Trilogy Analysis model” for a more structured approach. In the third step, expert opinions were gathered by asking a sample group of professionals in fields related to urban landscape (urban planning, architecture, and landscape) to rank the challenges within each category. For ranking, the one-sample t-test and Friedman test were applied using SPSS 24 software. A total of 240 questionnaires were distributed online to experts using the snowball technique, and 118 were completed within seven days.
Findings: “Structural challenges” in the urban landscape primarily relate to urban governance and decision-making processes. These challenges include issues such as the failure to convert urban landscape development plans into actionable outcomes. A major contributing factor to this problem is the inefficiency of regulatory systems. In Iran’s urban planning system, the monitoring and evaluation aspects are often overlooked. Specifically, there are no proper criteria for visual control of the urban landscape, or they are neglected. Additionally, the lack of adjustment in protection programs for historical cities has resulted in significant changes in recent urban developments. In addressing the challenges in the “content and behavioral” sector, attention was also given to the behavior of urban landscape professionals and the general public. Limited public participation in Iran’s urban planning system has long been an issue. The absence of public involvement in the design phase leads to a neglect of the visual and perceptual aspects of the city in the minds of citizens, as well as the cognitive and semantic dimensions of projects. As a result, many urban landscapes fail to establish meaningful connections with users, contributing to a sense of placelessness and lack of identity in cities. Furthermore, a significant challenge in the urban planning system is the absence of a common language between the academic community, professionals, and urban managers, leading to ineffective communication between these groups.
The findings showed no significant differences between the averages. However, based on expert opinions and the one-sample t-test, the three contextual challenges with the highest averages were:
1. Crisis and chaos in the landscape of contemporary cities.
2. Transformation of the cityscape and the loss of balance in the city’s appearance.
3. The disconnection between the historical and contemporary landscapes in cities.
In the category of “structural challenges,” inefficient oversight systems and the lack of evaluation and assessment in implemented plans are identified as the most critical issues. Challenges related to the behavior of professionals and citizens in the urban landscape fall under the content (behavioral) branch. Among these, the disregard for the concept of meaning is a key factor contributing to the phenomenon of placelessness in cities. This issue highlights the need for urban management to focus on the perceptual and visual aspects of citizens, which can be addressed through active public participation in creating the landscape.
Conclusion: This research, which specifically addresses the challenges within a particular area of the urban planning system, will be more effective in resolving issues in this field and can more purposefully determine the path of future actions in the urban landscape. Despite the abundance of studies focused on the urban landscape, a comprehensive examination of the semantic-identity challenges of the urban landscape, addressing both the objective and subjective aspects, has not been sufficiently explored. The findings of this research can be valuable and the results indicate that the three-part classification of 1) content (behavioral) challenges, 2) structural challenges, and 3) contextual challenges ranked in order of importance from first to third. To tackle the issues and challenges of the urban landscape, priority should be given to addressing “behavioral challenges.” Conversely, contextual challenges, such as the lack of sufficient knowledge in the landscape field or the adaptation of global guidelines to local ones, rank last in importance.

Abstract Extended Abstract
Background and Objectives: Finding a phenomenon’s origin and initial formation process has always been one of the basic questions raised in all science branches, and urban morphology is a branch based on this motivation. Research on the origin of an unplanned urban area is not as easy as planned ones. Before the establishment of modern urbanism in Iran, most residential tissues had been formed during unplanned processes. Due to the lack of a comprehensive real estate registration system, there is no precise information about the division of urban lands and the construction of passages and buildings in residential alleys. In simpler terms, the origin of its formation is unknown. In the present study, a part of the intermediate urban form of Gorgan city is selected to identify the origin of a spontaneous residential tissue. It is attempted to discover all the events affecting its urban morphology from 1921 to 1974. Since this intermediate urban form is located between the historic tissue and the contemporary urban tissue, in terms of time, it is located between two different generations from the date of formation of the city (1921 to 1971). Consequently, it is cognate with the historic tissue patterns based on traditional society and its gradual development. Likewise, historically, it is more closely related to the research time, and it is easier to follow the developments and transformations in the samples than in the historical tissue. Thus, it facilitates receiving collective awareness of the formation process. Like any other urban tissue, the physical elements forming urban morphology in the intermediate urban form include roads, lots, and buildings. Nonetheless, the combination of these elements creates a comparatively discrete identity from the planned tissues. In the intermediate urban form, which is typically spontaneous, there are intertwined relationships between roads, lots, and buildings; as such, to separate these elements from each other is not as easy as a contemporary planned tissue. Accordingly, the present study aims to study the factors affecting the formation and deformation of each urban morphology element and their combination with each other to explain the entity and complexity of urban morphology in spontaneous tissues.
Methods: The research method of this paper is based on a qualitative approach. It is a combination of grounded theory reading (Systematic) and a comparative diachronical morphology. Hence, the data were extracted both from structured interviews and with the help of morphological development analysis techniques to compensate for the lack of written data by deriving oral data from the knowledge of the early residents of the tissue.
Findings: The city of Astarabad, now known as Gorgan, could be a good case for sampling in this study because Gorgan has never been the center of a caliphate or monarchy despite its long history of habitation. Thus, unlike a typical capital city, it did not face fast and unexpected transformations due to the establishment of military and administrative centers or large-scale migrations and maintained its natural growth rate over the years. Since the beginning of the present century, the city has been a regional-scale nucleus and has played an economic role in surrounding micro-settlements. The findings reveal that urban morphology factors act as a matrix pattern, and their effectiveness does not correspond to a linear process. The components of this matrix consist of three areas: actors, action/interaction, and conditions, each of which includes a set of influential categories and has its types and dimensions. Individuals, families, and the local community are considered the most effective actors. Regarding action/interaction, property rights to land division, the agreement between the rights holders and the legal system are recognized as the most effective factors. The most important underlying conditions are climate, land economy, and household, respectively.
Conclusion: As a result, the urban form is shaped by conscious individual/family choices, social interactions, and the legal system; That is, the will and ownership choice in the formation and development of the urban fabric has played a more prominent role than laws and regulations. So that from the micro-level (individual) to the macro-level (legal system), the degree of effectiveness is gradually reduced and, in turn, prevents the formation of a top-down linear pattern. Moreover, the existing terrain, in an artificial or a natural form, plays a key role in urban morphology. Generalizing the results of this paper requires adopting a phenomenological approach to the analysis of each category obtained at the level of dimensions and characteristics, which requires another study. However, the generalizability of the results to other cities in Iran requires more comparative research, so there is a need to study more and more diverse examples from different cities along with this research.

Abstract