Investigation of Changes in the Structure of Isfahan City in Ancient Texture, Iran

Abstract

The structure of a city can be affected by many factors, such as environmental, economic, social, political, dominant intellectual parties and urban patterns of the world. Textural-spatial structure of the city is resultant of all forces that causes a settlement forms or constructed and has objective and subjective impressions. Development of the city had a descending and ascending trend, due to various events in all historical periods. Today, knowledge about spatial structure of the city and the reasons were dominated on its spatial expansion are needed to control its expansion and is one of the important effective factors on success rate of urban planners and designers. Textural- spatial structure of the Isfahan city which is formed quit and slowly during the different historical periods following the climatic, social, economic and intellectual parties in its own time; since the 1300 H.S, for many reasons, it has been undergoing evolution and transformation and then there have occurred various problems in the urban system. In such a way that, the Isfahan city which in olden times by having compact pattern was benefited from the social, economic and environmental advantages of this pattern, but along with the development of the city, it gradually getting away from this pattern. This paper with purpose of identifying factors affecting the textural-spatial structure of cities, is looking for analysis and identify the historical trend of expansion of Isfahan city and determines effective factors on it during the time using descriptive-analytic and historical research method and applying the qualitative-descriptive factors analysis. The results of this research show that, at first, natural factors, especially climatic conditions were among the most influential factors on the growth and development of Isfahan. But in subsequent periods, social, economic, political factors and especially dominant intellectual parties had a significant effect on the textural-spatial structure of the city.