A Survey on Employing Living Ethics in Islamic Urbanism

Most of the damages to nature are brought about through negligence in putting living ethics into practice by city dwellers. This critical ignorance which is becoming a worldwide environmental crisis has put forward a change in attitude towards nature and its international constitutions and laws. In this regard, religious recommendations and regulations have been considered as significant influences through this change towards better living conditions. This research attempts to address the concept of morality in the light of Islamic thoughts and principles in physical space and provide strategies for proper exploitation of the environment. The method of this research is descriptive-analytic case study which first surveys modern religious theories with regard to the body of the desired cities and their architecture and then in case studies these theories are put into practice in order to provide a framework to study and verify these Islamic cities as significant samples. The studies show that the basic Islamic thoughts about environment have promoted universal, cultural, religious, and moral supports and have introduced a special framework in different environments, as is the case with the Islamic tradition by applying a new expression, to show the respect for nature in all possible aspects. Regardless of unfavorable climate changes, traditional cities in Iran are examples of Islamic teachings which provide the best environmental conditions for human beings in which nature is employed in designing and city architecture.