Strategic planning for urban eroded textures (A case study of Babol city)

Cities are live organism which experience growth and decline in the course of time. If negative factors disrupt the order and spatial organization of urban places, the process of decline would accelerate. So, the old and ancient cities of Iran which present unique character and are valuable entities from history are exposed to erosion and decay. Babol as one of the old cities in the northern part of the country is encountered with decay and urban erosion. This study aims to investigate old physical structure of the city by concentrating on the descriptive and analytical methodology which employed SWOT technique to identify different negative and positive factors to present a strategic planning for urban renovation and rehabilitation. The results revealed that the old part of the city suffers from some the deficiencies of urban infrastructure and the texture needs urgent measure to be revitalized.