Architecture and Urban Development (IJAUD)

Urban commercial quarters such as bazaars can be found all over the world, from Turkey to Egypt, from Tajikistan to Iran. In Iranian cities, bazaars have very specific and unique architectural features and they have played an important role as economic and social engines. In addition, bazaars are an integral part of the cultural geography of Iran and have contributed to the definition of urban development patterns. This paper aims to critically explore sustainable architectural elements in historic bazaars and their relation to social and cultural components. This paper’s theoretical exploration is developed by detailing relevant findings from a case study on the significance of the sustainable architectural elements of the historic Bazaar of Tabriz, and it debates the relationship between those architectural elements and socio-cultural and economic components. A qualitative methodology, specifically in-depth interviews with shop-owners and customers and in loco observation, was employed. Findings show that the Bazaar of Tabriz has preserved its sustainability both in terms of architecture, by rigorous preservation, and in terms of sociocultural and economic components, by maintaining an exciting daily dynamic and a healthy relationship between shopowners, customers, local administration and the city of Tabriz. The preservation of unique and authentic sustainable architectural features, together with the maintenance of public spaces, such as mosques and schools, benefits the population of Tabriz and brings visitors every day to the shopping area of the complex, thus maintaining a constant flux and social, cultural and economic dynamics.

In this paper the designing products of B.A. Sophomore students of architecture in Tehran University who were divided into two kinds of learning namely technical and skill-based learning. In technical learning the subjective steps of creativity process i.e. "insight", "preparation", "incubation", "intuition", and "verification" were discussed and it was suggested that these steps cannot be taught but in skill-based learning the objective steps of creativity process i.e. "combination", "mutation", "analogy", "first principle" and "emergence" in a form of an instructional and designing practice were studied. In skill-based learning, three kinds of learning namely "passive", "active" and "reflective are utilized. Passive learning is used by the student to discover the knowledge and skill of the instructor. The active learning which is based on the idea is utilized for helping the novice learners. The result of the case study indicated that the perception through creativity in the designing process is like building a bridge on the knowledge gap between teacher and student through studying the samples of architecture as an active learning and student's implicit knowledge as a reflective learning. In this paper the emphasis is on the values of education and the very important point about learning designing is the access to the creativity as a product of an educational process. To this end the instructors' concern on the quality of improving the novice learners' designing ability and considering the suggested model in order to evaluate the designing improvement is quite necessary and indispensible.

Walking being the oldest form of urban transport, and until the advent of major transformations in transport technology in the nineteenth century, most cities were structured in ways that supported walkability. Today, there is a change in transportation which emphasizes, the traditional pedestrian paths which are increasingly becoming non-regulated spaces when compared to the urban spaces for automobile modes. This change in emphasis is noticeable partly because urban walkability has rarely been planned for in the past few decades and ultimately may replace our automobile dependency. It has brought enormous changes to urban landscape in recent times particularly in the developed world. Automobile dependency comes in different ways, forms and degrees. For instance, there are few cities worldwide that are absolutely automobile dependent (where driving is the only form of transport). Even areas that appear to be highly automobile dependent often have a noteworthy amount of walking, cycling and transit travel among certain groups or in certain areas, although use of these modes tends to be undercounted by conventional transportation planning. Contemporarily, reducing car dependency has been discussed broadly in the scientific community by professionals in the built environment and of course by the general public. With increasing vehicular streets worldwide, it raises a swirl of questions, how did we get to this point of automobile dependency and are the alternatives more desirable? In answering this question, this paper identified and discussed extensively thirteen major distinct trends that are responsible for the automobile dependencies in most cities of the world.

Value literally means to assess the worth of something against something else. The importance of the assessment of this word in the economic areas in a few past years has led the recognition of urban values especially in their historical parts. It is hypothesis that recognition, assessment, and introducing the existing values in historical cities have a direct relationship with the selection of the intervention approach in the process of conservation and development. The purpose of research, considering the mentioned assumption, is to find a response for this question: How do the existing values in historical cities affect the process of selection of the intervention approach? This study is a fundamental-theoretical research that has been done by interpretational-historical method and the selection statistical population are the four cities of Isfahan-Shiraz-Tehran- and Mashhad among Iran’s historical cities in order to special urban values. Obtained results show identifying and introducing the existing values in historical cities, in past century, has directly been related to the selection the intervention approach in Iran’s cities and regarding cases in which the results were not proportional to predicted goals, it was because of neglecting the existing values in cities and nonmaterial values such as artistic, social, economic, and political values are related to the urban fabric values of historical cities and the removal of physical values would cause the removal other values of Iran’s cities.

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.

Tourism organizations have become one of the main users of the internet in recent years by setting their own urban tourism websites. However, not all the websites are effective to promote their goals and objectives. An effective evaluation of urban tourism websites can help organizations on how best to employ them. Using the ICTRT (Information, Communication, Transaction, Relationship and Technical merit) model, this study tries to evaluate the efficiency of Iranian official tourism websites from functional perspective and their role in urban development. The aims of the study fulfilled by content analysis of two official urban tourism websites. The results demonstrated that the websites were not able to support Iranian Tourism Industry effectively. The focuses of these websites mainly based on the basic services such as information and communication. Advanced services such as transaction and relationship building were generally being ignored. Furthermore, a converse correlation was seen between complexity and performance of websites. Based on the research findings suggestions and implications in urban development were discussed.

As it is commonly understood, Urban neighborhoods play a significant role in developing urban sustainability as the smallest unit of city so that the formation and promotion of neighborhood identity, and focusing on social relationships would be in harmony with urban sustainability. It is believed that a dramatic change in spatial structure of urban neighborhood include a decline in levels of political, social and economic role of neighborhoods as long as they have had some disadvantages such as environmental pollution, marginalization, poor housing, socialpsychological and cultural damages, and particularly losing spiritual and material values as well in the recent decades. To limit these disadvantages associated with communities, neighborhood centers should be designed. The purpose of this study will analyze the concept of neighborhoods and neighborhoods’ centers and their effects on urban sustainability by descriptive- analytical approach and by gathering information through libraries and reviewing documents. This paper engages in analyzing components, dimensions, factors of sustainability and neighborhoods centers that integrated in the final model which characterized by practical-economic, environmental, empirical- aesthetic components; and, the validity of the used questionnaires based on factors of this model with 387 subjects (the selected sample) and the reliability of the questionnaires by using Cronbach Alpha through Bartlett Test and KMO factor at high level of 0/85 was proved. The level of significance of each component was reexامینed by concerning their effects on urban sustainability. By applying multiple- regression test, the statistical outcomes reveal that designing based on environmental components have the utmost impact on neighborhoods sustainability.

Recycling process is one of the most important processes in the trend of sustainable development, a logical reaction against the problems that results from industrial age. Building materials can play an important role in the process of a building formation or destruction, in fact, materials forms the building nature. Thus, the role of material and the impact of its recycling in sustainable development context cannot be ignored. Also, due to the rate of destruction and renewals that exist in cities and considering to the point that almost half of fuel storages are consumed in the buildings, the mass of materials that are sources of potential energy, should not be ignored. So, it is obvious that finding a fundamental solution in this area is necessary. In terms of research performance, this study is qualitative and as descriptive-comparative investigation and selection of the concepts is based on library and documentary methods, surveying some characteristics of recycling which in terms of quality and technique effect on architecture has been attempted in this research. Therefore, the role of recycling materials and the importance of their potential energy in the trend of sustainable development are investigated in this paper by descriptive-comparative method and appropriate and optimum solutions provided in order to reduce energy consumption in the field of construction and building materials.