Isfahan’s Organic and Planned Form of Urban Greenways in Safavid Period

Abstract

This paper reviews the experience of Persian designers and planners for creating the most livable<br />and greenery capital city in the hole region of Middle East throughout the 17th Century. New concepts of urban green<br />development emerged in that time. Some of these ideas where extremely creative and vanguard from there era and<br />still some of them are the main theoretical basics of urban green planning in the modern world. This paper focuses on<br />Isfahan's greenway planning ideas and discusses how the city transformed to a sustainable city in Safavid period. The<br />discussion is based on the combination of the organic and planned forms of greenway design, which was unique by that<br />time and made the garden city of Isfahan. The Maddies1, which are the branches of water derived from the river and<br />flowed inside the urban context, are studied as the bases of organic greenway and the Charbagh2 and Naghshe-Jahan<br />Square are investigated as the planned green developments.