An Emergent Urban Planning Theoretical Framework; A Complexity Approach Case Study: New Town of Pardis

In recent decades, the urban areas have gone through fundamental changes due to the development of new technologies, global reorganization of relations, and environmental risks which have resulted in a new outlook on the roles of center and periphery, definitions of space and place, mobility, etc. Dealing with these changes requires new approaches for understanding urban areas and redefinition of various related concepts. Approaches that are capable of taking into account the unpredictable dynamics and the complexity of urban challenges. Complexity and its theories have been used to provide a framework for understanding the new dynamics and their chaotic nature and unpredictability. In this regard, one of the approaches is to consider cities and urban areas as complex interwoven networks within the framework of complexity thinking, in which city dynamics are relational, emergent and contextual and generated by networks comprised of various actors and their relations. This study reviews the theoretical basis of the complexity approach, conceptualizing the notion of urban complexity and its corresponding concepts such as networks, actors, and relations. This study aims to propose a theoretical framework for urban studies that are carried out with a complexity approach. To achieve this, firstly, the article elaborates on the complexity approach and its related concepts such as complex networks, social networks, and actors and then focuses specifically on the manifestations of complexity in urban contexts. Building on these, the article goes on to propose a theoretical framework for urban planning. Finally, in order to clarify the use of such a framework, a case study built on the proposed framework is introduced. The case reviews the latest comprehensive plan of the new town of Pardis and conceptualizes the realizations of the plans. The theoretical framework is proposed using a logical thinking process including different stages of identifying the role of planner/researcher, the choice of theory, developing a working knowledge of the theory, and defining how the theory connects to the research objective. The step-by-step process is embedded in the structure of the article. Regarding the case study, in accordance with the proposed theoretical framework, critical realism paradigm and its process of analysis has been used to conceptualize how the plan has shaped and is linked to the real-life observations in the new town of Pardis. Based on the findings, the most important principle in enabling urban planning in giving order to the dynamic, social, uncontrollable and self-organized system of the cities is the identification of relations and interdependencies between the actors, which can include various aspects, such as different types of relations and centrality, depending on the researcher’s goal. The stepping stone to achieving this is to identify the actors and the networks present in the study context accurately and as extensively as possible. This approach also necessitates the redefinition of the role and function of planners, since in the proposed framework, planners are regarded as one of the actors in the network as well, but with an exceptional positioning, enabling them to either facilitate or impede the flows of relations within the network.