Environmental Sustainability of Newly Developed City Squares in Historic Cities: Case Study of Isfahan-Iran

AbstractIn recent years, sustainable development has turned into a broad area that embraces all methods and techniques in different levels of human activities and knowledge aiming to save energy, time, money and natural resources. Thus, environmental sustainability as a major aspect of the concept has intended the environmental issues as: climate change, global warming, waste management, sound masking, etc. The principal goal of this paper is to investigate the role of public squares in new developments and suburbia in historic cities from the view of environmental sustainability. Accordingly, the paper deals with some examples of squares in a case study (Isfahan-Iran) to show some problems in adaptation with the new 21st century-style of urban development in such cities. Therefore, the investigation compares the original historic squares vs. some recently developed ones. The literature review of this paper is based on internet, books and journals and previously published conference papers. Moreover, a qualitative research has been employed through local observation and survey in the location of the case study (Isfahan-Iran). The results will reveal the major principles of environmental sustainability in design of new public squares in such cities. This, in turn, opens new doors to future studies about adoption of old cities with new developments regarding to the concept of environmental sustainability