The study of urban form in Iran

Abstract

The study of urban form in Iran has not produced a substantial body of knowledge. This paper categorizes the works of Iranian researchers into two main groups. The first group comprises the efforts of individual researchers, forming the origins of this field of study. This group includes studies on individual cities or the history of urban form, explanations of the fundamental concepts of urban morphology, and the use of urban form as a general term. The second group comprises the currently-emerging flow of research. This relies on more precise explanations of urban morphological concepts, addressing urban morphology and its varied methods, including space syntax. These publications are categorized by the scale, methodological approach, elements examined, temporal dimension, cities studied, techniques used, relation to other fields of knowledge, major field of study and reliance on a technical vocabulary of urban morphology. This paper thus presents a critical review of the study of urban form in Iran to reveal gaps of this field of research, and identifies the urban morphology domains that remain unexplored by Iranian scholars.