A Quick Assessment of Tehran's Landscape

This paper offers a report about the professional workshop of researching Tehran which was held in August 2015 in Tehran along with the fourth and fifth Conference on urban landscape phenomenology. In this regard Denis Delbaere and Frédéric Poussin, experts on landscape and territorial planning, and professors of universities in France, explained their first impressions of Tehran in their first visit to this city. They expressed Tehran landscape features through drawings and providing graphical schemas.
In the past decades in Tehran, major urban plans have resulted in the construction of multiple highways and modern buildings. However, many important structural elements in the Tehran landscape are not the direct product of planning. A series of natural and cultural factors have shaped Tehran’s landscape over time. Moreover, citizens’ participation and influence have had a great effect in shaping the landscape.
The first objective aspect of Tehran’s landscape is the natural context which leads to a chain of mountains in north and a desert area in south with multiple hillsides in between. The northern mountains of Tehran instill a strong feeling and preserving this landscape will retain the city’s identity. Despite, numerous unharmonious elements in Tehran’s landscape, “water streams” act as strong ordering elements connecting different elements in a network and offer scale to places. Water streams, from northern rivers to little kennels have provided continuity in urban landscape.
On the other side, people confrontation to heavy traffic, which draws attention in the first glance, and passersby who calmly cross the streets, displays people affiliation to the landscape of their city. People of Tehran consider this urban space as a public space of their own and show a sense of belonging which is of great significance in landscape. Urban landscape projects must bind to the same record. Discourses on public participation in planning always insist on building the partnership as if it does not exist, whereas in fact there is always a partnership and using it in managing and proceeding of plans is important. In this regard, understanding the subjective aspect of landscape is imperative. It is vital that we know how people think about their environment and how they want it. Although this is a complex and difficult task, but it would become plainer if we see public space in landscape aspect. Landscape is always simple, comprehensive and clear, and this simplicity and clarity increases its flexibility and capacity to adapt.