Volume 1, Issue 5 (3-2026)
مکتب نقدنظر 2026, 1(5): 10-11 |
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sabukro D. Urban Management and the Misunderstanding of Urban Voids: A Critical Review of Treating Landscape as an Instrument of Intervention. مکتب نقدنظر 2026; 1 (5) : 4
URL: http://jcr-sj.com/article-1-47-en.html
URL: http://jcr-sj.com/article-1-47-en.html
University of Tehran
Abstract: (33 Views)
In contemporary urban design and landscape architecture literature, urban voids are often characterized as problematic, inefficient spaces that disrupt the physical and perceptual coherence of the city. Over the past two decades, alongside the rise of discourses such as urban regeneration and sustainable development, a dominant approach has emerged that redefines these spaces not merely as crises but as “potential opportunities” for enhancing urban landscape quality. Adopting a critical stance, this paper argues that such a conceptual shift is neither self-evident nor neutral; rather, it constitutes part of the dominant discourse of urban management which, by foregrounding landscape interventions, constrains fundamental critique of the processes that produce urban voids and the spatial power mechanisms involved. The central argument is that the prevailing focus on landscape projects frequently reduces a structural and multi-layered issue to an aesthetic and manageable level, and through a form of depoliticization of space, removes the origins of urban void production—such as dominant urban development logics, land policies, and institutional mechanisms—from the realm of critique. Within this framework, the urban landscape is diminished from a platform for critical engagement with crisis to an instrument for managing and containing its consequences. By rereading urban voids as critical indicators of disruption within the city’s spatial and managerial systems, the article emphasizes that improving landscape quality can be meaningful and sustainable only when it is directly linked to critiquing the processes that generate urban voids, and when it moves beyond purely beautification-oriented approaches.
Article number: 4
Keywords: Urban Voids, Urban Landscape, Urban Management, Power Discourse, Depoliticization of Space.
Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Special
Received: 2025/12/19 | Accepted: 2026/02/4 | Published: 2026/03/1
Received: 2025/12/19 | Accepted: 2026/02/4 | Published: 2026/03/1
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