The role of gardens in urban regeneration: a conceptual framework

Gardens۱ have been a key criterion in forming urban settlements, landscapes and foodsource as humans have always been in perpetual attempt to live close to naturalenvironments, and gardens have been and still are a representation of human-made naturalsetting serving for this purpose. Nevertheless, urban sprawl and under-planned urbandevelopments in recent decades have severely affected the inner-city gardens, mergingthem into built areas, deteriorating their identity and facing local communities with variousecological, cultural, social and economic challenges. Having this in mind, this paper aimsto propose a comprehensive, holistic approach in order to regenerate urban areas based onthe numerous beneficial effects that gardens can bring about. With this purpose, afterreviewing the research literature, the varying, effecting dimensions which gardens canpossibly have in urban regeneration including ecological dimensions (gardens as a part ofgreen infrastructure, water management, increasing biodiversity, decreasing air pollutionand heat islands), cultural dimensions (gardens as a part of intangible heritage, collectivememory and festivities), social-health dimensions (gardens as a space for communitygatherings, intriguing social interactions and healing effects), economic dimensions(orchard-related tourism and branding) and also the governance factors affecting gardensin the process of regeneration were obtained. After attaining these dimensions, componentsand indicators, a conceptual framework was proposed which can hopefully guideresearchers and designers studying and working in these especial areas. Moreover,significance coefficient of each dimension, component and indicator and also the totalweight of the index constituents was measured according to a questionnaire answered byurban studies experts. The results show that, the ecological dimension has the most and thespatial dimension has the least significance coefficient, which highlights the fact that inorder to preserve our communities we should revive, conserve and maintain our gardens.

کلیدواژه ها:

urban gardens ، urban regeneration ، regenerating cities by trees ، community gardening