Protecting Historic Urban Landscape, using visual protection surface method (VPS) (Case Study: The Historic Urban Landscape of Qur'an Gate, Shiraz)

he main goal of this research is to assess the future problems and protect of the historic urban landscape of Qur'an-gate, is known as one of the most valuable landscapes of Shiraz, against the development of contemporary construction. The main difference between this article and other similar research is the attempted to use the latest quantitative analysis methods in a three-dimensional environment to accomplish the accurate result Instead of general qualitative methods. Hence, the research method is a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods. In the first step, Visual Protection Surface (VPS) technique in the ArcGIS and Rhino was used to determine the permitted threshold of buildings and compared with the similar values in the master plan of Shiraz. Then the simulated pedestrian views have been checked.The results show that the standards height determined by the master plan of Shiraz in the effective area of the historic urban landscape of Qur'an-gate have undergone from the serious defect. It means by implementing the existing altitudes, including construction up to 24 meters in the northern section of the Hafez-street and up to 33.5 meters in the Ali-ibn-Hamzeh-bridge, the pedestrian views of this non-renewable landscape will collapse completely. The results of applying the above technique indicate that by reducing the height from 1 to 14 meters in just 93 construction blocks and also strict monitoring to prevent the increase of unauthorized density, the full conservation from this historical urban landscape simply provides for the present and future generations.