The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

The chapter includes identification of the need for reconceptualization of architectural and urbanistic discourse in higher education and the definition of the transdisciplinary methodology for a sustainable development of the living environment. Architecture and urbanism as complex disciplines that start from the existential social needs and reach to the most complex challenges and aspirations...

The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

The archaeology of pre-Columbian polities in the Amazon River basin forces a reconsideration of early urbanism and long-term change in tropical forest landscapes. We describe settlement and land-use patterns of complex societies on the eve of European contact (after 1492) in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon. These societies were organized in articulated clusters, representing smal...

The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

The paper studies the Islamic viewpoint about the environment and presents the notion of environmental balance in an Islamic economy. It asserts that this balance can be maintained with the help of Islamic ethics and institutions. The paper demonstrates the positive role of the private sector in terms of environment-friendly behavior, fellow-feeling, and simple living of the people. Similarly, ...

1 Department of Physics, Takestan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran 2 Department of Chemistry, Takestan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Takestan, Iran 3 Department of Chemistry, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mazandaran, Iran 4 Environment Department, Research Institute of Environmental Sciences, International Center for Science, High Technology & Environme...

Scholarship on the city in Islamic world has generally played down autonomy and collective agency of cities. This article explores case Anatolia, usually neglected discussions urbanism, focusing Seljuq period 13th century. While much scholarship Anatolia acknowledges role futuwwa (trade-based confraternities somewhat analogous to guilds), I argue independence these organisations been overestima...