Urban Sustainability from Urban Morphological View Point

In the past, sustainability of traditional cities was caused by not only their compact physique but also by cocerning the city as a living place for the residents who were mostly builders and in charge and thus basically the roots of its being constant.To thoroughly understand the Bam Citadel morphological sustainability with the passage of time, initially by the research implements content analysis and library research on definitions and scholars’ view points to define a theoretical framework based on urban morphological factors and the resulted compactness in relation with urban sustainability and further, through simultaneous field and library research delves more deeply into how it all adjusts with living conditions in Bam Citadel from Parthian Empire to Qajar dynasty onward. This study firmly believes that, from a morphological view point, as long as the city enjoyed an organic development, and the determining factors were internal and local, physique compactness in line with interrelated internal-human factors managed to effectively supply the sustainability over time. But once the basis of expansion turns to be external, maintaining the compact physique without considering economic-functional, social-cultural, and political-defensive revolutions and incoherences over time leads to unsustainability and loss of optimal urban functioning, which, in turn, causes the urban physique growth not to be based on the need but on numerous external factors. Generally, these factors include manufactured physique in association with the natural physique and the main human factors (functional, economic, social, cultural, and political) in an interrelated combination over time. That is to say that, the manufactured physique can include instances like attention and emphasis on designing the public spaces, designing neighborhood units in the form of adjacent and compact districts and paying attention to the quality of the design, assigning the precedence to pedestrian and transportation routs which are public and thus in itself again include the urban connectivity of the physique via routs and connected, linked, compact, various, and flexible spaces, in accordance with unique geographical characteristics of the place like climate, plant coverage, topography, the maximum use of local resources, maintenance of agricultural and valuable natural resources lands, and being cautious in using water resources and supplying water (natural physique).Basic researches as well as theoretical and field studies on Bam Citadel maintain that the physique compactness is the necessary but not sole condition in obtaining urban sustainability from a morphological view point. It is strongly believed that this very fact blends in an interrelated combination of various, mixed or composed commercial-economic functions, overlapping with other activities and can cause an increase in economic outcome, provide mental and actual safety plus consistency and elevation of the sense of constructive social belonging which means social interactions and associations, public cooperation and paying attention to human factors and imperceptible surveying of the inhabitants in public spaces, and bring about development in the sense to rely on the public capacities and abilities in the process of development and increase the production in the society and thus as a result mai ntain sustainability of the city.