Under the influence of recent socio - economic and technological transformation, Iranian cities have experienced notable changes in their spatial structures. Reviewing the main aspects of morphological change in the City of Rasht, this paper attempts to analyze the underlying factors of recent spatial change and how it influenced the conditions of urban life in this city.
The main data and information employed in this article come from different case studies and author’s experience on the City of Rasht over the past five years. As the largest city in southern Caspian shores, Rasht is witnessing a relatively rapid change in its spatial form. The change in the spatial structure of the city is observed both in old districts as well as in the newly built neighborhoods. Using a descriptive method, collected data and information have been analyzed to sum up the characteristics of spatial structure of the city over the past decades.
Changing the street layout through widening or opening the new thoroughfares in the city center and reshaping the old network from an unplanned pattern of the past into a semi- radial layout, substituting the single story houses with multi story buildings, change in the architectural style, development of new forms of residential complexes within the city as well as in the outskirt and a boom in housing construction are the main changes which one can observe in the present Rasht. This paper also discusses the increasing social segregation in the city, as the income gap among social groups is widened. It argues how economically based neighborhoods are segregated in the city.
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