حمید ماجدی

Fast and unplanned city growth, has effects such as isolation of village societies, threatening urban cores and centers and small and weak societies, destruction of open spaces and open and natural regions. Smart growth offers a sustainable way for urban developing with appropriate use of available sources, increase of urban services, developing neighborhoods with different uses, making public transportation available and integrated designing in human scale. Green belts idea,at first was based on controlling the growth between cities, preventing from merging cities and separating specifications and details of city and village from each other. Although according to the fact that, there was not an agreement regarding the possible outcomes of green belts and controlling cities growth process among city experts, some with conservative ideas, believed that green belts are stopping barriers and negative factors in natural growth process of cities and some others, thought that it is element of separating urban and non-urban habitats. In first approved comprehensive plan of Tehran (2006), suburban ranges were recognized as protected range for future city developing. This definition has no more places according to the problems of Tehran. In this article based on the natural and environmental potentials of Tehran protected areas (Green belt) and many threats for its exposure to residential construction, there are offered strategies and protecting rules with smart growth approach and green belt definition.

The following study aims to present an innovative approach for Design. Participatory Design is the model of direct involvement of different social groups in the design from functional tools to environments, social institutions and businesses. Diverse collection of practices has been developed to support this direct involvement by Participatory Design. People are invited to participate during different phases of an innovative and creative process; from initial exploration to problem definition and defining the problem and creating ideas for solutions. During development, they help evaluate proposed solutions. Participatory Design answers questions about users and their tasks and goals, then help users to make decisions. Participatory Design is characterized as a maturing area of research and as an evolving practice among designer. Architecture as a professional design are social constructs and the way for humans to consider the physical world in which they exist, and as social constructs, both reflect and shape the culture in which they arise. The authors go through the definitions of Participatory Design in order to achieve a new approache in design. various values which are inherent in the social fabrics are illustrated by emphasizing on cultural identity and activity. To illustrate the concept of this approach, landscape design of bazaar in mahallat as a case study is considered.This research will attempt to identify and analyze the local participation, and goes some way to providing practical solutions to tackle the local problems, utilizing an effective application of the principles of sustainable development on both environmental and architectural aspects.

The term ‘deteriorated texture’ gives all experts as well as ordinary people almost the same impression. Despite common points in images, the differences put Iran cities in different categories based on deteriorated textures. This classification not only has negative effect on the audience from mental point of view but causes various problems for the experts in determining interference method. For example, the textures having different deterioration causes yet from body point of view have led to the same deterioration placed under the same category. This itself leads to new problems and results in the deterioration process. So, this study has based its performance on deterioration indicators through investigating different definitions of deterioration and putting aside formal definitions of deteriorated textures. Then, having reviewed interference perspectives, we put the final frame on deterioration indicators. We have analyzed several interference projects in deteriorated textures in order to come up with a theoretical framework and arrive at basic criteria. Of course, it should be mentioned that we have tried to select projects which have common condition with Iran so that the resulted criteria can be applied in deteriorated texture in Iran.

A’ view of nature within the framework of garden and in relation with human needs and drives that satisfy the need to be rooted has caused the representation of nature in garden to be regarded as cultural heritage. Garden and garden designing are suitable cases for us to study cultural characteristics and traits. Thus, human beings have searched their eternal interest in an ideal and unattainable world in garden building and garden totally reflects each culture. Art and knowledge are both represented in garden in which engineering creativity reaches its summit. Japanese garden is one of the oldest patterns in gardening in the world. It demonstrates Japanese ideology, ontology, cultural views and rites. Relativity and multi religions represent its cultural difference. Changeability and cultural ease along with preserving basic core and nature of Japanese culture are the basis of Japanese culture. Japanese garden is one of the most obvious emblems and representatives of Japanese culture. The aim of this paper is to make a content analysis that will primarily study the cultural characteristics and will then focus and conclude the results of Japanese garden designing as a cultural physical symbol.

The aim of this research paper was to determine the role of urban space design on cities competitiveness in the process of globalization. In the era of globalization and with the rush of investors to find attractive places for investment, cities are becoming the focal points for investors and the urban managers, who need to present a variety of attractions to draw financial capital and be able to compete with other cities. But, it seems these days, capital and time is wasted due to the lack of coherent theoretical foundations regarding the role of urban design professionals in making cities and urban spaces more attractive. This study explains and discusses the role of urban design in the process of making cities attractive in order to compete, by using a descriptive approach and by studying and reviewing relevant scientific resources and researches. The outcome of this study shows that today the relationship between urban design and urban economic conditions are reversed, and this phenomenon, based on the aims that have been mentioned in this article, has created a new model of urban space management in order to attract investors and develop urban growth.

Just like any other economic field, housing market has two basic foundations which are demand and supply. Its obvious that disequilibrum between these foundations, will drasticaly affect the housing affordability and can also lead to wide slump in many markets. That’s why, policy makers usually intend to stimulat the supply by means of providing low intrest loans, low priced land, etc. In this paper the correlation of private sector’s inclination to invest and supply housing with various criteria has been analyzed. Dependent variables deputed for investment inclination are investment volume and estimated floor area of started residential buildings, completed residential units and total floor area and number of residential units in permits issued. On the other hand, the independent variables used are liquidity, house and land price and accumulated deficit of residential units. Besides, the Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP) has been applied to time series data, in order to separate the trend components and the cyclic components. The result of analysis indicates that the liquidity has the most correlation and the accumulated deficit of residential units has the least correlation with the private supply inclination.

Like other developing countries, Iranian cities are growing and expanding physically at a high speed. For about five decades, the only policy of the urban development plans in the field of urban growth management has been definition of the Urban Growth Boundary (U.G.B.) which is still used without any major modifications. Despite the slight evidences indicating the ineffectiveness of the current policy, there has not been any assured and agreed alternative yet. Today, the waves of new urbanism and other modern paradigms have urged temptations of making fundamental changes in the definition of urban growth boundary. Through an analytic framework, this research investigates the effectiveness of some of the most basic carriers of urban growth in 11 sample cities (each of them introducing one type of Iranian cities). The results of this analysis will illustrate a new vision- a native one - for alternative policies of urban growth management in Iranian cities.