International Journal of

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Electronic cities result from the implication of information and communication technology (ICT) in the contemporary era. Significant ICT development and internet network expansion as well as the need of urban management to new ideas in managing cities lead us toward a new strategy called "electronic cities". The current study aims at investigating the Electronic Cities' Strategic Planning Case Study: Uremia, Iran. The research method is documentary and survey research population consists of mangers and specialists working in Uremia's urban planning and ICT, obtained from Morgan table. To collect data, Likert spectrum is employed. Findings indicate that the most important challenges in the way of establishing an electronic city include the lack of strategic document for urban development, high number of decision-making centers and administrative extra parallel works among them, the inclination of the urban managers toward traditional methods, low-speed, high-cost internet connection, the lack of infrastructures for ICT, the lack of digital literacy among citizens and so on. With respect to ANOVA results, findings indicate that some of the sub elements play a key role in the establishment of electronic cities. Concerning the inequality of the role of factors effective on the establishment of electronic cities, each factor's sub elements has been ranked through multi-criteria decision making techniques and TOPSIS model. According to the findings, some strategies have been recommended, which need the serious care of urban managers and planners in the metropolitan Uremia.

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Persian garden have deep roots in paradigms and beliefs in Iranian culture, from arts and crafts to architecture and landscape and from literature to philosophy and wisdom in particular. The current study was done based on a qualitative methodology. To understand the latent concepts of the quadruple paradigm, those engaged have aimed at testing in practice and analyzing new concepts through the latent directive content analysis. This helped us through the objectives of this article for developing the quadruple paradigm and a new classification of quadruple Persian gardens. In this regard, this study sought the relationship between archetypal and historical Persian gardens and four fold plans as the key factor for finding the secret meanings and symbolic concepts. For the analysis, seven case studies on the Safavied dynasty were selected. This is the first study investigating focused on the quadruple in Persian gardens to the extent of believing and art history as a philosophy of paradigm could be categorized into three main groups and the themes were identified as a major classification: 1) Sacred-Archetypal gardens as an interpretation of supernatural beliefs and paradigms, which might be manifested through a spiritual landscape, carpets, paintings, or architectural façades; 2) governmental and authority gardens, which could be seen in the fields of architecture, landscape, and many Iranian arts and crafts; and 3) orchards as the blessing gardens representing birth and growth, thus bringing spiritual blessing and genius loci for human comfort.

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‘Privacy’ in Islamic culture is considered one of the concepts related to the existential dimensions of human beings and one of the most important spiritual needs for self-improvement and a sincere connection with Allah. In this regard, mosques, as places for the Muslims’ collective worship ceremonies, are not only a place for social interaction but also a privacy-focused gathering, they are optimal places for thinking and enjoying some private moments with Allah. Two questions arise that what are the components of creating the privacy in the Architecture of mosques? How do these components result in the creation of this privacy in the mosques? The present study is basic and qualitative research in terms of purpose, which uses both comparative and meta-analysis methods. In this study, while analyzing documentary studies as well as in-depth and open interviews, mosques from Isfahan were selected as a case study. The NVivo software was used to analyze qualitative data. Based upon the conceptual model obtained from the research findings, three types of privacy have been proposed. The first mode is ‘having private moments with oneself’ which is made by the components such as ‘introspection and remembrance’. The second mode is ‘having private moments with Allah’ which is formed via components such as the companionship of light and darkness and the vacuity. Finally, the third mode is ‘the privacy in the public’ which is created due to components such as verbal and non-verbal communication.