Building new cities is done with the aim of improving the spatial structure, optimal use of natural resources, inhibition the concentration of population and activity in cities, and spatial planning on environmental system of a country. In our country, increasing problems of urbanization and the concentration of population in big cities and regional imbalance caused Department of Housing and Urban Development in the late 1980s offer the plan of building new cities. According to this plan, the government approved building 18 new cities in the country and 4 new ones around Tehran in 1989. Many seminars, conferences and meetings have been held in order to examine success or failure of these cities and many articles and book have been written too. A brief look shows that the vast majority of these cities have not been successful in achieving their goals. Lack of infrastructure and independent economic base and their dependency on metropolises was Achilles heel of most of them. For instance, none of new cities around Tehran achieved to their population horizon. The main reason is the weakness of economic foundations changed these cities into dormitories. Hashtgerd New City has absorbed only about 30000 people while 500000 people had been determined for its population capacity. The population of Pardis new city is about 60000 people whereas its horizon for population is 1500000. The situation is almost the same in other cities. Andisheh is the only acted relatively successfully in population-taking dimension, but economically and socially it is dependent on metropolises.

Second generation of new cities is under review in a situation that there is no clear horizon of current new cities. No coherent plan is offered for economic, social their dynamism. Experiences of new cities in the world show that if new cities have specific and planned economic-functional performance, they will act very successfully so that new town of Crawley in England has become one of the largest industrial hubs of London and the south coast of England or new towns such as Tuen Mun to Sha Tin have prominent industrial-trade position and it has provide their fast population-taking. Other issues that should be considered in the design of new cities are environmental considerations and sustainable development. In England, the origin of garden-cities, after passing three generations of new cities, Eco cities is a term that has been very popular and they build new cities on this basis. It seems that most new cities of previous generation of our country did not have environmental look and based on urban sustainable development and the sustainability problems are numerous.

Therefore, according to these debates, the necessity of pathology of current new cities is their comparative comparison with successful experiences and recognizing their weaknesses and strengths before attempting to run third-generation of these cities.

Source : ISNA news agency

Date : October 10, 2015

News Code : 94071811314