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Discursive Urban Development and the Modernization of YazdAli Modarres Cities in Iran have witnessed considerable growth over the last few decades. Of the 60 million people recorded in the last national census of 1996, 37 million (i.e., 61%) lived in cities. For some cities, the level of growth has been so rapid that housing shortages in the older neighborhoods have translated to haphazard western-style sub-urbanization. After Qom and Tehran, Yazd, as a province, has become one of the most highly urbanized states in Iran. As of 1996, over 75 percent of the population in the province lived in cities. The city of Yazd itself has grown from a small dusty town of 63,000 residents in 1956 to 330,000 people in 1996. This has introduced a number of problems for which planning solutions have been sought. The result has been a disturbing urban landscape that has gradually lost its physical and social cohesion and has translated, directly or indirectly, to the destruction of many of its older neighborhoods. In many Iranian cities, old neighborhoods gradually meet with misfortune and become the residence of migrants and immigrants. This has meant that some of Iran’s most important vernacular architectural heritage has been placed in the hands of those who can least afford to maintain or repair it. This book explores the appearance and disappearance of Yazd’s traditional neighborhoods and offers an alternative interpretation of urban history in this provincial city. This book is an ode to a fast-disappearing local culture and its urban representation and warns of the outcome of destroying the sense of place that has been eroded under the forces of modernization and imagined nations. With the destruction of the sense of local and planting of the sense of total, the meaning of historical neighborhoods is lost and the importance of monumental architecture is exaggerated. The book concludes with an illustration of how such a loss may have translated to apathy towards the maintenance of vernacular architecture, and as a result, the identity of most cities and their unique historical character is sacrificed. Publication Date: Fall, 2003 |
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