Introduction to Urban Development Department

For urban and regional development, our country requires roughly 70,000 urban and regional development programs. In fact, if we want to approach the global development caravan, we must believe in the issue of urban planning and invest in it so that we can be like developed countries and make up for our backwardness by planning resources. Unfortunately, at present, the abilities of specialists in this field are ambiguous and not seen in the general culture of the society, and the architecture and urban planning engineers are not interested in this issue and don’t tend to it. Although engineers are on the verge of building, they do not intervene on a large range, namely, they do not study a city with all its social, human, economic, cultural and physical characteristics. Thus, they are not successful in planning or designing a city.  

A specialist of urban planning is a person who can work in the field of urban design or urban planning and be a factor in the development of the city. Urban planning knowledge analyzes all the social, economic, political and physical developments of a city and strives to organize the current relations in a city in the framework of coordinate system, and an urban planning expert is someone who offers a well-organized and effective plan for a city by studying the social, economic, political and cultural relations that govern the city. There are at least 6 main aspects in this field which are crucial for planning and designing a city.

Urban planning, which focuses primarily on land use, surveys how we allocate space and development of the city to activities, such as industrial, commercial and residential and many others. 

Transportation planning, economic and social planning are necessary for a city because there is not only the issue of the physical study of the city, but there are also the important issue of urban society and the people who live in this environment. In other words, comprehensive infrastructure network planning, such as water, electricity and telephone, etc. should be made for people of different social strata that have social, economic and cultural facilities, or for different ethnic groups living in different parts of a city.   

Environmental planning which examines environmental hazards, such as floods and earthquakes, plans to deal with these threats and studies the adverse effects that humans have on the environment.                            

Urban Planning deals with the three-dimensional design of a city and focuses on human relations with its physical environment. In fact, in urban design, human beings with all their physical, mental and spiritual characteristics are considered and its goal is to improve the quality of the city.

Students of this field should be interested and familiar with design and artistic concepts, such as the psychology of paints, technical concepts and technical principles of work like surveying and mapping, technical drawing, spatial geometry, modeling, mathematics, and human and social issues like sociology. In addition, they should know that they have to do a lot of research and practical work during their studies. Furthermore, the field of urban planning requires a lot of study and extensive practical work, so students should dedicate a lot of time to it. Also, they must have a high analytical capability and be adept at design.