From Paradise to desert – Reclaiming the role of garden in Isfahan’s New Towns interplay with energy drivers

The presence of gardens as the structuring element in shaping the Iranian indigenous cities had an important role in the territorial organization. They shaped the interrelation between infrastructural networks, settlements and agricultural tissue and made the relationship between the culture and nature possible. Indigenous landscape organization in the semi-arid climate of the Iranian plateau shows the necessary role of energy management at different scales of urbanization. In the past, gardens as complex landscape entities, were identified as sustainable energy systems. (Behbahani, 2011) They were associated with trans-cultural tradition and landscape mechanisms, combining energy drivers and the spatial development in the cities. Energy drivers are the essential forces and motions in different layers of a territory which influence changes in stable spatial developments. (Jakob, 2001) However, due to fast urban growth and the introduction of new drivers into the territory, the new urbanization model forgot the indigenous practices, and caused an over-utilization of land and resources. It is a landscape of transportation, accumulation, production and construction where successive energy drivers are making the cities, regions and urbanized locations. (Ghosn, 2009) Today this model faces a challenging problem of scarcity (mainly water) and therefore, integrating the energy flows into the study of the Iranian territory is essential to understanding future development. In order to study this issue, the paper focuses on the dispersed city territory consisting of a network of New Towns around the city of Isfahan, which was also the cultural and economic capital of Safavid dynasty during the 17th and 18th century. The radical change in the territory is largely the result of a newly industrialized region with different energy consumption centers (as oil refinery and steel Mill Company). In the evolution of Persian garden history, Isfahan is the first post-medieval example where the city is open towards landscape without any fortification (Faghih, 2012), and in which the geographical condition was tamed by involving drivers such as the river, canals and vernacular underground water structure called Qanat. The garden worked as a starting point for spatial configuration which also formed the basis for resource management for the city. (Khosravi, 2014) Access to water was the necessary and sufficient condition for the garden as driver of development, therefore the existence of Zayandeh River (life giving river) as the biggest river in the Iran’s central plateau, was an important element in construction of Isfahan city. In addition, technically advanced water management structures were designed in order to direct the city’s development and productivity by integrating it into the larger regional systems. This article targets the shift in perspective of Isfahan’s New Town developments through the lens of the Garden as a regulator of energy drivers. The New Towns’ original plans show a dominance of the garden form in the conception of the plan while a closer look at the actual construction shows that the gardens no longer follow the structure of the traditional Iranian system but merely serve as ornaments to the city. The existence of the garden no longer targets resource management at any scale of development. From garden to greenery and beautiful scenery to residual cores on one hand, and the water management and city growth on the other hand do not follow the Chaharbagh’s (traditional Persian system) managing principles. In this reading the garden concept is a multi-scalar component which unravels the inconsistency in the interrelation between the nexus of energy drivers from the scale of one New Town neighborhood to the dispersed territorial scale of Isfahan. Recognition of the problematic processes will be a starting point for projecting new sustainable agendas for the on-going and future development of New Towns and the larger region. In the first part, the paper studies the value of indigenous landscape management in the Isfahan region. This is valued beyond its celebratory character, emphasizing the infrastructural significance. Furthermore, the reading helps to re-work this indigenous landscape management projectively. The article targets this gap in reading Isfahan’s recent growth in order to highlight the shift in the role of the garden in New Town development and investigates the relationship between resources and new settlements. The second part the paper selects three New Towns and analyses them in comparison with Isfahan city. To approach the issue descriptively, the principles of landscape urbanism based on interpretive cartography have been selected as a methodology. The landscape characteristics and the accessibility to energy drivers are different in each case of study, therefore mapping is a way to observe and unfold these complexities. Historical maps and archival documents support the projective mapping of the cases from the regional scale into the meso scale of the New Town to the neighborhood scale, unraveling the relationship between garden and the city.status: publishe