title: Physical evolution course in cities
title: In interaction with political, economic, geographical, social, cultural factors and urban management ; case study
titleType: AlternativeTitle
title: Mashad-Iran
titleType: AlternativeTitle
Creators: name: Rezvan, Alireza
Publisher: name: Technische Universität Dortmund
Year: 2012
Subjects: subject: Pattern for estimating
subject: Physical evolution
subject: 710
subject: Meschhed
subject: Stadtplanung

description: Many cities in developing countries are confronted with many problems regarding their physical structures. The efforts to overcome these difficulties arose from the political, economic and cultural structural factors that preside over those countries. Iranian cities also follow this pattern of development. However, many of these cities lack the necessary research and scientific knowledge to determine a suitable path for development and planning. Furthermore, policymaking does not rest on a basis of suitable fundamentals and information. Many plans in these cities have therefore led to unsuitable results and, rather than moving existing aims forward, have created new difficulties. Mashad, as the second-largest metropolis of Iran after Tehran and the third-most important religious city of the Islamic world, has a great development potential that should be correctly and properly applied. Essential to this goal is the availability of necessary information about the history and regional and local characteristics of the city and, on the other hand, having enough knowledge about other developing countries’ experiences. Using this information and these analyses and tested theories, one can work towards a suitable development program for this unique city. Under this assumption, this dissertation has two main aims. First, the gathering of documentary evidence and categorization of historic information about Mashad, especially in the physical field, and second, the production of a pattern for evaluating the degree of influence of factors that affect the physical evolution of cities and their comparison with each other. This would be effective in discovering the reciprocal relationship of these factors and could pave the way for applying urban experiments in similar future analyses. With these aims, Mashad is used as the case study and Iranian and European cities as the general comparative grounds for this study. Initial results show that effective factors on the physical evolution in Mashad have not only had very different conditions from European cities but also with other cities in Iran. For example, the main influence of political factors on the development of Mashad in all of historic periods and the gradual growth of this effect in Iranian cities versus the decreasing in this effect on the physical development of European cities is significant. At the same time, while social factors (with an emphasis on public participation) have continually grown in their effect on European cities, these show a significant decrease in Iranian cities and especially Mashad over the course of history. This phenomenon can be seen in the lack of urban public spaces for social interactions within the core of the city. These different features fundamentally emphasize a need for new development planning specifically for this city. The presented pattern for estimating the state of a city or cities in various historic and chronological periods and the comparative tables in this pattern prepare the grounds for analysis and produce several results, which are shown in detail in the dissertation. Without exaggerating, the lack of information about Mashad and the need for completing this work before producing schedules, diagrams and analytic and comparative tables have made this dissertation the equivalent of two theses in the frame of one research project; I hope this will be considered.