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.

 Following the growing urbanization, choosing and providing housing has become one of the mos t important issues for planners as well as people. Developing a comprehensive program of housing needs complete identification and deep analysis of widespread dimensions of housing and factors affecting them. In the meantime, addressing housing indices, as the key planning tool forming its main thrus t, can be the mos t critical step of planning. By conducting research on identifying and analyzing different housing indicators, the effectiveness of housing programs can be greatly increased. However, among the policies and plans that have been made due to the overcoming of economic factors and the lack of clarification of the good housing index, the qualitative indicators of housing have remained somewhat diminished relative to its quantitative dimension, and planners have more focused on providing housing. This research seeks to find and compare the angles of unders tanding and evaluating the residents' viewpoints on the desired housing, and ultimately, address the impact of location on the mental valuation of residents about the cons tructive components of housing quality. The research method is descriptive-analytical and in order to achieve the desired goals, the qualitative indicators of desirable housing are surveyed from residents' point of view in Shahrak-e-Gharb and Monirieh neighborhoods of Tehran. In the formulation of the questionnaire, 48 items are developed in two areas of the residential unit and residential environment, of which only 13 indicators have a significant difference between the two neighborhoods indicating that the spatial domain has no effect on residents’ valuation of housing quality indices and also the average values given to the items show the great importance of the quality of housing for citizens. 

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.

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.

Social diversity in the neighborhood districts has been the new approach for the challenges resulting from varieties in cities. Social interpreters of this policy are to create neighborhoods where people of different ages, ethnic-racial backgrounds, income, etc. take a place in it. In this regard, many designers by using the concept of different forms of ownership such as housing schemas, different types of constructing and housing etc. have tried to promote it. Due to the less interest that came toward this issue, the knowledge of this mechanism is poor in urban ecology of Iran. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of urban design in promoting the social mixing which is determined with the research of the Abadan community areas. Relevant parameters have been studied with library studies, field visits and by the use of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods. Therefore, after reviewing the relevant concepts, we are going to test hypotheses by the exامینation of case studies, and finally, the influences of urban design criteria are presented.