Applying gentrification process for historical texture of ardakan city, Yazd, Iran

Author: 
Reza Shaker Ardekani and Hamed Akhgar

Urban historical textures are part of the national and cultural heritage of a country that is not only from an aesthetic perspective, continuation of collective memories, but also due to being the residence and living place of millions of people are valuable. However, these textures for economic, social and managerial reasons contain negative characteristics such as image and landscape chaos, lack of proper access, lack of urban facilities and equipment, disturbances in social and economic structure and physical deterioration that lead to evacuation of a large population from these textures. In fact, a main limitation of the historical urban texture, especially in the central parts of cities is getting out of the cycle and economic life of the city. In simple terms, the loss of economic and financial justification causes capital flight from and lack of investment in these areas. One of the interventions to reduce the gap between the amount of capital and investment in historical textures is gentrification which in its framework, renovations, the measures taken and displacement of population has led to the "improvement of the quality of the environment" and "residing of more prosperous classes of society" and consequently, an increase of turnover and the improvement of the texture from the social, economic, cultural, and environmental perspective. But the question is whether the process of renovation of historical urban textures of Iran can be explained in a theoretical framework of gentrification? For this purpose, it has been tried in these pages to use a descriptive - analytical review of documents – library survey, and to introduce this theory and its aspects and this process is explained in the context of Iran's urbanism structure in order to facilitate this theory and reduce problems of the historical texture of Ardakan, and solutions are proposed in micro and macro scales.

Paper No: 
004