Recognizing the Concept of “Utopia” and the Feasibility of its Actualization by Biophilic Urbanism

Man-Environment interaction is often not desirable in today's societies due to recent social trends such as population growth, increasing urban tendency, restrictions and impositions that inevitably lead to inappropriate architectural, urban design, and special lifestyles. The Issue brings to mind the ancient concept of utopia, in which one of the main aspects has always been the interaction with nature. So, it turns to the interpretation of ecological utopia today, under a realistic view. Accordingly, paying attention to the city as the main human living space requires more concentration on ecology and nature, especially in terms of morality. In other words, to create a naturalist city must pay attention to the ecological dimensions and indicators, which is possible by emphasizing the sustainability approaches in terms of the formation and management of cities and their territories. In this regard, biophilic urbanism as an approach to sustainability strategies has received increasing attention in recent years, which in addition to pursuing that in the environmental dimensions includes themes related to social sustainability, especially ethical principles, and encourages the correct use of natural systems in the design of the built environment as a result. This study has attempted to clarify the effectiveness and position of this fledgling approach in achieving the goals of the ecological utopia in the contemporary world.

Methods and Materials:

According to the criteria and indices considered in biophilic urbanism, this research has concluded its essential components in a documentary study. It suggests integrating them into an ecological utopia approach using a descriptive-adaptive analysis. Regarding this, the present study is developmental and applied in terms of purpose that seeks to expand and explain the criteria, formulate indicators, and refine the mechanism of achieving sustainable cities in a large-scale futuristic attitude and in this way, it has used a qualitative content analysis by descriptive coding, and of course, a critical approach. Therefore, this effort provides a platform for clarifying the process of achieving ecological utopias by using urban biophilic knowledge and making it possible to give correct direction to effective policies in contemporary urban management. Thus, in addition to the review-analytic aspect, the present article also has an original and innovative face.

The results indicate that the actualization of the transcendent phenomenon of utopia should be sought in the concept of ecological utopia, in the contemporary era and with a realistic view. This requires the adoption of a multidimensional approach consisting of three functional and effective indicators of political-governmental, cultural-social, and physical-economic and measuring their individual, combined, and cyclic effects on five environmental and impressionable indicators of land, water, air, waste, and energy in the form of research-proposed complementary-evolutionary pattern based on the biophilic tendency. This is where the irreplaceable role of morality shows itself in regulating all types of human relations in the different contexts of physical, natural, social, and political environments, more and more. Because without paying attention to the truth of morality, nothing will sustain and so, it must be acknowledged that if ethical principles remain limited to words and are not evident in the governmental performance and the daily behavior of the people, not only would not have a positive effect, but also leads to the accumulation of social complexes, disgust,  further destruction of the society, and the ever-increasing cultural decline because of the aggregation of deception and hypocrisy.

Despite being achievable, it is evident that a revolution in the relationship between human culture and nature will be needed on micro and macro scales to achieve the contemporary utopia due to the many requirements based on the abovementioned areas. In this regard, recognition of the important elements involved in the system (biophilic planning and design as a tool and approach to confronting the problem; Morality as the necessary foundation to realize the approach; sustainability as the ultimate goal, and finally, ecological utopia as a desirable product of the process) is extremely important, which should be considered in strategic planning at national and international levels.