Urban Ecological Landscape Planning and Design from Garden City toward Modern City - a Case Study: Tehran City in Iran

It is widely believed that urban ecological landscape regards the city to be an ecosystem built by human activities and supported by natural and man-made functions and processes over time. In the past, human communities have selected their residing places and designed their cities by paying attention to natural environmental resources. The profound influence of technology and industry has brought lots of changes in population, culture, attitude, and urban ecological landscape. Now, many metropolis of the world have faced rapid population growth and destruction of urban ecological systems. Most of ancient cities in Iran have many historic gardens and villas that organized ecological networks with connections between natural elements and resources inside and outside the cities. Tehran is situated on the northern fringe of the great central plateau and at the foot of the southern slope of the impressive mountain chain of Alborz. New urban development lead to urban ecological landscape destruction with changing land use and has caused major environmental problems. Based on this research and considering the historical formation background of the city of Tehran, it is concluded that in the past the city was formed according to the natural structure, but in recent decades as a result, the comprehensive and detailed plans carried out in Tehran which neglect the environmental structures and landscape ecology and also the valuable historic gardens, we are confronted with the disturbed situation of the city, Environmental pollutions, fragmentation in the landscape ecology, disorder in the city structure and land use, etc. This study reviews the issue that whether we can reach strategies for Ecological Landscape planning and design of the Tehran landscape only with conservation and continuing ecological structures of landscape and their survival in City, taking ecological structures` degradation, historical documents related to landscape of Tehran and its changes during the time into consideration and also according to current research. And there is no other way left for the planning and design of the city’s landscape rather than through ecological and historical revision of the city.