Mahdi Hamzenejad - Assistant of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
Abolfazl Meshkini - Assistant of Geography and urban planning, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Akram Ghasemi - Phd Student of Geography and urban planning, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Nowadays, due to the widening gap between man and Nature, the presence of Nature or its enrichment in the city is considered as an indispensable factor in current urban landscape design and it is essential to establish a proper relationship between the city as a component and Nature as a whole. All religions and schools of thought have offered their own specific sets of ideas about nature and natural elements and about man's relationship with Nature, and through contemplation in those ideas, the influence of these ideas on the formation of man’s living environment will be explicable.The aim of this study is to solve the identity crisis in contemporary Iranian cities through the identification of natural elements and phenomena and to find a way to detect how they effect cities’ identity. Via descriptive research, documentary study, and Delphi techniques, this study provides some criteria and strategies to solve the crisis of giving identity to the city corresponding to Iranian culture.

Identity, naturalism, natural elements, Iranian city