Issues and Significances of a Reconstructed Cultural Landscape: The case study of Bam and its Cultural Landscape

The aims of this paper is primarily to represent a clear prospect of why cultural landscapes are important, and what constitutes cultural landscape in the World Heritage context, then to address the significances and issues of the reconstructed urban cultural landscape of Bam city after the 2003 Bam earthquake, and to extract its implications for future considerations. To achieve this purpose, the study is divided into three main sections. The first section gives an overview about the world heritage cultural landscape, including the notion of cultural landscape and the history of the presentation of cultural landscape in the World Heritage List, and the ways for management of historic urban landscape.The second section will interpret and address the significances and characteristics of inscribed property of Bam and its Cultural Landscape in the WHL, issues on applying the convention, and current issues of cultural landscape conservation in the region. Finally, the third section is intended to survey about the history of urban morphology of Bam city, especially the reconstruction carried out after the earthquake, and seeks to know whether all of the city’s authenticity and integrity, which are determined by various factors, have been achieved during reconstruction or not.The result of this study shows that the city of Bam as one of the unique ancient cities of Iran where before earthquake by its extraordinary historic urban landscape well showed the rich history of Bam’s people in desert environment of Iran, after the earthquake has been faced with heterogeneous development, including alien architecture and destruction of the city’s cultural or visual landscape. So that all of those changes have had led to the loss of infrastructure, urban identity, and disorganization in the urban hierarchy of Bam city.

Keywords:

Cultural Landscape , 2003 Bam Earthquake , Bam and its Cultural Landscape , Urban Identity