PhD thesis based on Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) in Iran

We are happy to share a dissertation written by Dr Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad from Iran who, by his own words, is one of the first landscape architects in Iran to work scientifically on edible landscapes. His PhD, entitled Urban agriculture as a tool for city and landscape planning in Iran with emphasis on the role of Persian gardens”, focuses on edible landscape planning and design for the particular situation of Iranian cities and landscapes.

Here from the abstract: ‘This Ph.D. project as a landscape research practice focuses on the less widely studied aspects of urban agriculture landscape and its application in recreation and leisure, as well as landscape beautification. I research on the edible landscape planning and design, its criteria, possibilities, and traditional roots for the particular situation of Iranian cities and landscapes. The primary objective is preparing a conceptual and practical framework for Iranian professions to integrate the food landscaping into the new greenery and open spaces developments. Furthermore, finding the possibilities of syndissertation the traditional utilitarian gardening with the contemporary pioneer viewpoints of agricultural landscapes is the other significant proposed achievement.’

Plans of the case studies. (image: M.R. Khalilnezhad 2016 www)

Khalilnezhad envisages the ‘Persian garden as a tool for city and landscape planning’ by ‘integrating this garden system into the concept of Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPULs)’. He writes: ‘In fact, the CPULs concept would be a basis for connecting the Persian historical gardens [located] in urban settings with the other open spaces; physically and [strategically]. The pattern of presenting the historical gardens in an urban context is a patch, and interestingly, by [physically] connecting the gardens […] into infrastructure, the network of the
productive landscape will be created.’ (Khalilnezhad 2016: 200)

Good luck with your work, Mohammad, do keep us posted!

The dissertation can be found here.

Image: Analysis of the aerial photo of Amir-Abad Garden clarifies the quality of synthesis of the utilitarian agriculture with pleasure gardening. It creates two kinds of sceneries concerning their separation in plants, position, direction, planting design, and application. (source: Khalilnezhad, M.R. (2016) Urban agriculture as a tool for city and landscape planning in Iran with emphasis on the role of Persian Gardens, PhD thesis, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, p 68)