Masoud Nari Ghomi,
Volume 8, Issue 3 (12-2020)
Abstract
Identifying ideal user is a basic function of theoretical debates of urban design. Here, the situation of the concept of” Ideal user” is enquired in three main categories of social theories used in urban design discourses (i.e. socialistic theories, ecologistic ones and performance-based theories) and it is shown that none of them is of enough relevance to Islamic model of socio-spatial relations and there is critical conflicts for their simbiosis. The negation of middle-scaled groups of cultural society (i.e. the family and neighbourhood) in socialistic theories as well as the anti-idealistic and individualistic assumptions in the ecologistic theories make them unreliable for Islamic aims. The performance based theory in its turn bases its debate on non-honest relation from ethical pont of view and has not proper basics for Islamic view. So a new theory based on Quran and Ahadith is proposed for socio-urban interactions that can be summarized as: In Islamic view the out-of-home environment is a place for relations of the kind of the limited home-like ones that emerges from duties and rights that Islam puts on members of Islamic society. So it can be said that urban space is an expansion of the home inner space. And in this model the society is not seen as a unit composed of individualized persons whose individuality emerges by exiting home; but the community emerges from expansion of family nodes and sharing of borders of fields arranged around such centers and so the urban space is formed - in its turn- upon nucleous made in developing homes. It is not made from summing up personal spaces and not by connection of them by in-between spaces. Here the definition of urban space as none-residential space or third place in which people look for none-residential relations is cicked out. In other words, in searching for Ideal User for Islamic theory of town design we do not look for “Islamic Fleneur” but we search for a human for whom Islam has made duties to become an ideal person and the responsibility of the urban space is aiding him to depart from existing condition to ideal one.
