Imposed or Natural Identity? Javanmardan Park, Landscaping in Kan Valley

The streams and river valleys of southern hillside of Alborz Mountains have created a special geographical and topographical situation for Tehran city. The rigid and confined approach in confronting river valleys of Tehran in development plans of 1968 has ignored their structural role in providing a city life. It has changed these rivers into a disposal channel for surface water, sewage and a dangerous spot in Tehran city. In master Plan of Tehran (1385), potential river valleys in shaping and defining the spatial organizing of tourism zones Tehran was on the agenda of urban management. Kan River Valley was assigned a tourism element of the city and and an organizing plan for the river was legislated. Javanmardan Park along Kan River valley, located between Hemmat and Hakim highways, within the 5th and 22nd district, was projected and implemented as a product of these policies. Today, after more than 3 years of implementation, the questions on transformation of this significant project into one of the worst parks is still queried. Why a project on this scale with a special emphasis of upstream documents and urban management happen to fail in the end? Why with regeneration aims of river valley, this project is not only successful in attracting audiences, but also changing to a factor in the destruction of the natural and cultural identity of the river valley? This article explains the reasons why Javanmardan Park ignored the primary purposes of organizing and generation based on existing documents and the process of definition, planning, design and implementation. The gap between the objectives and strategies outlined in the organizing plan for Kan River valleys in local and thematic master plan of 2006 and organizing plan of Kan River valley and its surrounding by Armanshahr consulting engineers and major and minor policies of Atak consulting engineers as the major plan of this project are mainly discussed in this paper. Having compared the policies and purposes of upstream plans in organizing of Kan River valley and transforming it into a tourism zone of Tehran city and its obtained results in “Javanmardan Iran”, two main factors are recognized for failure of project definition (Maintaining the natural quality of the valley as one of the most important elements of the city and creating personality, identity and visibility alongside the river). The first factor counts for lack of understanding of consultant designers in recognizing landscape values of the site and landscaping elements of Kan river valley while the second one roots from lack of sufficient technical experience in the design and implementation of landscape architecture in the river bed. While utilizing the river valley potential and generating a tourism zone was primarily planned in the early stages of development and project definition and management. In fact, the designers’ impose landscape and non-landscape identity while changing the valuable natural landscape; a landscape which was aimed for regeneration and conservation.