Urban Night Landscape; (An Approach to Strategic Plan of Lighting in Mashhad City)

Urban design as a knowledge which aims to improve urban environment quality due to citizen’s perceptions and behavior, has accepted night and nightly urban landscape as an important part of life. Therefore, lightening can define city, landscape identity and night city image. Moreover, city lightening design is not only decorative but also very
useful for safety and peace. Hence, improving urban spaces landscape, especially at night to encourage people to use urban spaces, becomes necessary. Nowadays, urban lighting based on no nab original patterns plays negative roles in environmental qualities as well as no identity through causing undesirable urban landscape. Emphasize on characteristics
of area, using standards and raw patterns in international and even national level do not meet urban lighting demands. Diversity in configuration and structure of Iranian cities has led to specific identity for each city, however, unfortunately because of ignoring such features and lowering some local and native indices, there is uniform manner in the cities.
The present paper aims to evaluate role of lighting to promote night life quality in Mashhad metropolis through focusing on light essentiality as one of the primary components of urban landscape. The studies of lighting strategically plan in Mashhad with about 30000 hectare area, in four biological-functional areas involved central, middle, western and suburb to evaluate aesthetical qualities in proportion to national and spiritual identity. Most update planning techniques in urban development aims to improve life style quality of citizens. On the other hand, it is worthy to note that the main purpose to conduct this project is not to lighten the whole city than to use light. Emphasizing on more creativities and innovations and applying newer techniques and better light application as a urban and social element to develop and improve environment are not always necessary, sometimesdarkness rather than lighting should be emphasized in some parts of city. Therefore, through the approach of this paper, light would not be used only in the central part of the city (businesses, services land uses, etc.) and as an aesthetic factor. Therefore, paying attention on abandoned area aesthetics and it’s beautify should be followed emphasizing on qualitative streets lighting and urban spaces. Hence, by referring to various sources and literatures, field and library studies it was found that the issues of urban lighting in Mashhad metropolis, dimensions and spheres of influence are so diverse and broad. Strategies to achieve specific application can be integrated and functional. So, in such these studies, in the first step, the size, scale and scope of urban lighting discussion were examined and classified. The second step was to identify the range of actions on integrating and implementing studies and postgraduate studies about the provisions of the migration, the design of active, lively, safe and memorable for all citizens, tourists and travelers. The urban landscape at night with special lighting issue were analyzed and attempted to reset  the objectives, strategies and adjust the recommendations. The final step is to define the action of local projects - the subject and developing standards and guidelines in specific areas in the general and the particular manners. The results of evaluations showed that to perpetuate urban life during night, some achievements and facilities may be taken as strategic plans for Mashhad night lighting to meet civilization life development demands via social interactions and urban spaces productivities. Social equity via covering all public spaces, economic development via making new opportunities for investment and urban tourism, and fortifying religious cultural identity focusing on cultural symbols are results of promoting Mashhad dignity in national and international scales.