Cultural Quarters Approach in Practice; a Case study from Iran

Cultural quarter is one of the recent culture-led approaches in regeneration of urban tissues. Culture is a major and central factor in this approach. But what do we mean by the word culture in cultural quarters And whether all principals defined according to the western culture for a cultural quarter, are possible to be applied in other locations of the world such as Iran or not These two questions are our research questions that will be answered by a case study in Iran (Khajoo quarter in Esfahan city). After much deliberation of Khajoo, we observed that this quarter simultaneously and without any prior idea, has many characteristics of a cultural quarter. But on the other hand, by studying the theoretical principles of cultural quarters we found these principles emphasize on some points which are not compatible with Iran’s indigenous, traditional and religious cultures. In Iranian quarters some places such as bars, clubs, betting shops and some lifestyles such as street life and club culture are not considered to be as cultural elements and concepts; Because, in Iranian culture there are some different concepts and cultures such as introversion and Mahram and Na-Mahram principles. All in all, at the end of the paper we will conclude that by paying attention to the properties and characteristics of the cultural quarter theories, we would have cultural quarter in Iran only when their principles are defined based on the vernacular culture of Iran and not based on the so called globalized western culture.

Keywords:

urban regeneration , cultural quarters , vernacular culture , Khajoo quarter