Urban conservation and spatial transformation: preserving the fragments or maintaining the ‘spatial spirit’

It is evident that in the mediaeval period a relatively stable urban form was shaped and preserved for a considerable period of time until the Industrial Age, both in Western mediaeval and Eastern Islamic examples. From this period, cities witnessed a new type of development, different in size, scale and momentum. Large-scale transformation of historic cities under modernisation soon led to serious concerns about the preservation of historic cities, especially from the second half of the twentieth century. By adopting an spatio-analytical methodology based on ‘space syntax’ theories and techniques, this paper investigates the concept of urban conservation through a comparison between the spatial organisation of the traditional city and the transformation of this structure become the historic core of the today's modern city. This relies on the analysis of a representative group of cities from two Western and Eastern realms, England and Iran, and the comparative investigation of their old and new historic cores. The analysis shows that the fate of the historic core is strongly dependent on the way its spatial organisation is transformed. When the grid is the subject of massive transformation, regardless of traditional characteristics, damages to the urban structure make the process of conservation rather difficult; whereas a moderate transformation sympathetic to the original organisation of the city gives great potential for the core to survive and to be conserved appropriately. From this, the paper develops a new view towards urban conservation, more concerned about preserving the essence of the old cities, or the ‘spatial spirit’ of the place, than with a fruitless effort to rescue the individual buildings or spaces regardless of the urban context within which they can function and survive.