Urban Environmental Aesthetic and Identity : The Case of Masouleh, Iran

Abstract

Urban environmental aesthetics and place identity have begun to take their place on the design and planning agenda, especially in recent years. Urbanization resulting from competition between cities has caused the loss of identity and aesthetics in cities all over the world. The decreasing use of traditional building methods and planning, without consideration of the local context, by developers, authorities, and even administrators of cities has led cities to resemble each other. In light of these developments, the shape, form, texture, and especially identity and aesthetics of settlements become important in planning and urban design. While the concepts of aesthetics and urban identity are difficult to define, there are some parameters to evaluate them.

This paper has two main objectives. The first is to determine parameters to evaluate aesthetics and urban identity. The second is to check these parameters over historical and touristic settlements. For this purpose, the concepts of aesthetics and spatial identity will be explained within the scope of the literature. The city of Masouleh in Iran has been chosen as an example of a historical and touristic settlement. The systematic development of the historical settlement, as well as the landscape, identity, and aesthetics of the environment's harmony and texture, were evaluated with a descriptive-analytical approach methodology based on the parameters revealed in the scope of the research. The findings aim to reveal the aesthetics and identity of historical residential areas. Including this information in scientific studies will lead to the design of more aesthetic settlements in the future.