Urban-scape: An Analysis of the Approach and Theoretical Background to Develope a Conceptual Framework

Urban-scape and its literature which has been playing a major role in improving the quality of environment in the public spaces and landscapes of today’s cities has been widely developed through the last century and on the threshold of the third millennium, which attracted the attention of landscape architects, urban designers, and planners. The urban-scape and the indicators of its arrangement are considered one of the main concepts in measuring the sustainability of cities. This concept, along with the subjects such as urban health, quality of life and urban livability, have become the principles considered by international institutions for ranking the world’s cities. Based on this, and with the evolution of new contexts and developments of urbanism influenced by the changes in the environmental system and international economics, the urban-scape theories have also been affected by this approach both in the process and in the content of material changes. Having considered that, the present article attempts to analyze the most important theoretical prospects in this field, to perform comparative comparisons of the relevant approaches, and to provide a conceptual framework for the city’s urban-scape in the future. Urban-scape subject has been studied through various approaches and prospects by different scholars and theorists. In the present study, in order to assess and elaborate on the views of the most prominent scholars on the urban-scape as well as to develop a conceptual framework for it, through the documentary study method and valid references in this field and by reviewing the definitions and concepts of the urban-scape, the most innovative ideas, key theories and controversial discussions available on the urban-scape, along with the explanation of the classification mechanism and the typology of approaches, are studied and categorized for the first time in the form of four major periods of time. These time periods which are from the Industrial Revolution to the Townscape Movement (1960), the Townscape Movement to the New Urbanism Movement (1960-1990), the New Urbanism Movement to the Landscape Urbanism Movement (1990-1997), and the Landscape Urbanism Movement to the present (1997-2014) include five different subjects of aesthetic; context-oriented including visual-spatial perception, visual-behavioral perception, new urbanism, landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism, along with the common components of each period. In addition, in order to establish the conceptual framework and the theoretical context of urban-scape, we have analyzed the views of 23 experts in this field where the most important aspects of urbanism have been identified. The logic behind this classification and the classification mechanism of the above approaches can be found in the thoughts and theories of the first movement’s theorist at the beginning of each period, in the identification of the ideas of the scholars having similar influential attitudes on the topic, and finally in the formation and improvement of the approaches taken from the ideas of the above-mentioned scholars. For instance, “Camillo Sitte” initiated an aesthetic approach during the Industrial Revolution to the Townscape Movement and emergence of an aesthetic (visual) component by introducing “City Planning According to Artistic Principles” in 1889. After that, with the generalization of context-oriented discussions, and in particular the “Townscape Movement” by the “Gordon Cullen” in 1960, the period of the Townscape Movement to New Urbanism with contextual approach began, and the aesthetic (perceptual and conceptual) and functional components along with the aesthetic (visual) component were introduced from the previous period and were formed based on the subdivision of visual spatial perception. After that, the other subdivision of the context-oriented approach, i.e., visual perception-behavioral subdivision was formed with the emergence of the “Space Syntax” by “Bill Hillier” and “Julienne Hanson”, and the incorporation of the element of behavioral science into previous components in 1984. Then, the third period, the period from the New Urbanism Movement to the Landscape Urbanism Movement began with the introduction of New Urbanism and Urban Sustainability with an approach to the neo-traditional development of the texture and urban areas in 1990, and thus the environmental component was added to the previous components of the earlier periods. And now in the fourth period of the typology of the urban-scape historical evolution, as “Charles Waldheim” introduced and initiated the “Landscape Urbanism” in 1997, a landscape urbanization approach has been emerged. This is an approach in which the landscape and open space are considered the main elements of the city’s construction, and the multi-level, contextual and complex components have been added to other previous components. Finally, the Ecological Urbanism approach introduced by “Mohsen Mostafavi” in 2010 and the multi-component with ecological insights was added to the components of the previous periods. The four major time periods identified and categorized for the first time in the present study, are discussed in detail