Fundamental Terms and Conceptions in Physical-Spatial Planning (Part I)

In recent decade in Iran, there have been published a vast number of books (compiled or translated) and scholar articles on different issues in various branches of geography. Most of these publications often focus on particular issues, but only rarely offer an expansive overview of the variety of terms and concepts in use within the field; Moreover, the conceptions used are mostly not meaningfully relevant and in some cases even misleading (it is especially true in falsities in translating these terms and conceptions into Persian). Moreover, the new trends and approaches in modern geography, especially spatial debates and planning theories are in some way the most neglected topics in these publications. In contrary, the most interested fields in these publications are often students’ thesis-based case study ones, compiled mostly by students themselves. So, some problems have been evolved from insufficient descriptions and lack of sufficient clear and perceptible definitions. The result has been not only a growing vagueness of some terms and definitions, fundamental to applied geographies, but the misleading of growing number of students of the field. The main aim of this article is to provide a relative detailed description and discussion of the terms and concepts which are central to the theoretical debate and empirical research in spatial planning within modern applied geography.