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Hosseinzadeh M. Pathology of the Role and Position of the Street in Urban Development Plans in Iran Case Study: Bala khiyaban and Paeen khiyaban Streets in Mashhad. JORS 2024; 2 (2) :14-21
URL: http://jors-sj.com/article-1-29-en.html

The historical city of Mashhad has faced the emergence of new streets in two periods, first in the Safavid period and then in the contemporary period. For the first time, Safavid created a new structure for the city by building a street (Charbagh) connecting the gates of the city so that the role of traffic in it was secondary. This axis can be considered the most important social center of the city of Mashhad until the modernist interventions of the Pahlavi period in Mashhad. In the period until today, with the emergence of urban development plans such as the master plan, the streets were widened, and this was noticed with the advent of cars, which are known as transportation organs in the conventional reading. In recent years, the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, to revive the lost meanings and roles of the street, published the regulations for the design of urban roads. 
To investigate the impact of this regulation on the revival of the street’s role in development plans, the current research raises two questions: 1.What is the approach of urban development plans to defining the role of urban streets? 2.To what extent has the urban street design code been effective in redefining the role of the street? Why?  For this purpose, this research investigated and compared the role of the street (Bala khiyaban and Paeen khiyaban) in the historical city of Mashhad in two phases: pre- and post-interventions of the master plan, and examined the position of the street in each period. The results of the research show that the partial approach of the master plan to the city is the reason for the reduction of the role of the street to mere access passages. The modernist approach of the master plan recognizes the street as merely connecting the functional zones of the modern city. This research underscores the need for a paradigm shift in urban development plans, recognizing the city as a whole entity, to prevent the reduction of the street’s role to mere access passages. Otherwise, similar regulations will not lead to significant changes in the role and status of city streets.