Place and Role of Geography in New Urban and Regional Planning Literature with Emphasis on Iran

Literature on Urban and Regional Planning changes rapidly and related disciplines such as Geography need to determine their specific place in new condition. Harvey believes that goals of field rely on geographer’s personal philosophy and attitude to life, thoroughly. So, many of these philosophies are which provide different views on the nature of Geography for us and then, we cannot prescribe single philosophy for Geography as a field. This study relying on definition of geography as regional knowledge offers a conceptual framework and common language to describe role of geography in urban and regional planning. Geographical literature in connection with urban and regional planning has been encountered two main problems which can be classified in two categories: internal and external. The first of which is that various books with different topics are included in academic curriculum, resulting to confusion of students. Usually, Students do not provide an appropriate response to question "Why they read diverse collection of books and courses?” and are not able to communicate between Geography and urban and regional planning. Also, occasionally, new branches in geography make it the more fragmentary but it is necessary to remain a place for regional geography in Geography. The second problem is that unfortunately, other practitioners and specialists in urban and regional planning have not appropriate understanding on academic task, nature and position of geography in urban and regional planning. Besides these, why we attend to Hartshorne’s philosophy of Geography is development of new approaches in Urban and Regional Planning which correspond with this philosophy in our country aptly.