Brasilia, Brazil, 29 March - 3 April 1999
Urban Conservation and Spatial Transformation:
a spatio-analytical approach to continuity and change in the historic
cores of Iranian and English cities.
Dr Kayvan Karimi
The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies
(Torrington Place Site)
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
England
tel (44) (0)171 813 4364
fax (44) (0)171 813 4363
email k.karimi@ucl.ac.uk
www http://www.spacesyntax.com
Cities are always involved in a continuous process of change. However,
it is evident that in the mediaeval period a relatively stable urban form
-the organic city- was shaped and preserved for a considerable period
of time until the 18th century. Although the cities of this period also
experienced different fortunes, they tended to adopt a gradual and incremental
process of change, both in Western mediaeval and Eastern Islamic examples.
This process created a distinguished pattern of urban structure, which
incorporated the concepts of irregularity and diversity, but meanwhile,
managed to develop a complex urban logic based on configurations and relations.
This overall stability of form in old cities began to cease by the beginning
of the Industrial Age. From this period cities have witnessed a new type
of development, different in size, scale and momentum. The magnitude and
power of the modern urban transformation, soon led to the rise of serious
concerns about the preservation of the diminishing past, and the issue
of urban preservation has become one of the controversial subjects of
urban studies, especially from the second half of this century. The significance
of morpho-analytical studies in a thorough understanding of urban behaviour
has been experienced in numerous urban studies. This type of study seems
even more valuable in the field of urban preservation, since a major concern
of conservation is the physical formation of cities. By adopting an spatio-analytical
methodology based on space syntax theories and techniques, this
paper investigates the concept of urban conservation through the comparison
between the spatial organisation of the traditional city and the transformation
of this structure in the way to become the historic core of today's modern
city. This will rely on the analysis of a representative groups of cities
from two Western and Eastern realm, England and Iran, and the comparative
investigation of the old and new historic cores. The analysis shows that
the fate of the historic core is strongly dependent on the way its spatial
organisation is transformed. When the grid is the subject of massive transformation
regardless of the traditional characteristics, the damages to the urban
structure make the process of conservation rather difficult; whereas a
moderate transformation sympathetic to the original organisation of the
city gives a great potential to the core to survive and to be conserved
appropriately. From this the paper develops a new view towards urban conservation
that is more concerned about preserving the essence of the old cities
or the 'spatial spirit' of the place, instead of a fruitless effort to
rescue the individual buildings or spaces regardless of the urban context
within which they can function and survive.
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