This book offers a resourceful collection of essays examining recent efforts to respond to the challenges of planning, management and conserving landscapes in contemporary Iran, the home of Persian gardens. Drawing on selected recent studies, the chapters discuss the following topics:

• 
The sphere of knowledge and theoretical bases, including a survey of recent and ongoing research;
• Persian gardens remaining from the 6th century BC to the 19th century AD, which have influenced garden design in a vast geographic domain extending from India to Spain;
• Management and conservation of cultural landscapes, historic urban landscapes (HUL), and natural landscapes in the face of changes in climatic conditions and livelihood practices affecting their delicate dynamic balance and functions essential to their distinctive character; and
• Historic Territorial Landscapes (HTL) formed and evolved along the Silk and Spice Roads as compositions of tangible and intangible elements resulting from movement, exchanges and dialogue in space and over time. The book is a useful resource for a range of academics and professionals, such as landscape architects and managers, landscape historians and conservationists, and urban planners and managers.

Autorentext

Inhalt
Part I: Paradise in Persian.- Introduction: Persian Paradises and Peril questioning connotations and concepts.- Paradises of the Pen a survey of Persian gardens in the Eleventh Century Persian literature.- The knowledge of landscape contemporary landscape architectural research in Iran.- Part II: Paradises perceived.- The layered life of historic urban landscape.- The lost proportions of Qajarid Vistas examining the geometry of Lalezar garden.- Paradisiacal streams water and the historic urban landscape of Isfahan.