Problem statement: The direct connection between the city and nature leads to the emergence of natural edges in the city. The present study investigates the status of the river valleys of Tehran, as the most important natural edges in this city, by studying the upstream management documents of Tehran. This study and critique of the current situation have been done concerning the studies done on these edges at the landscape level. Besides, by looking at the documents related to the status of natural edges, it has been tried to examine the viewpoints of those documents on these elements of the urban landscape.
Research objective: Considering these natural edges, this study seeks to identify and examine their status in urban documents and regulations of Tehran.
Research method: The present study is qualitative and is conducted through the content analysis of documents by library studies. This study is conducted in the field of theoretical foundations, documents and examples of foreign projects.
Conclusion: Comparison of the existing views of the river valleys of Tehran based on the landscape science and also study of the examples of urban edges in development documents indicate lack of attention to cultural or identity dimensions of natural edges and aesthetics of river valleys in the comprehensive urban plan document at the macro level. Under these two dimensions, issues, such as public participation and considering citizens’ mentality of the river valleys are raised in the cultural dimension. Moreover, issues, such as their roles as the view corridors and perspectives related to these natural edges in the aesthetics dimension, are discussed in foreign documents. This can also be applied to the natural edges of Tehran. At the intermediate and operational levels, this study demonstrates a rhetorical and discontinuous viewpoint of the river valleys as large and influential green areas at downstream scales. Content analysis and reference to the foundations of the formation of plans, such as the comprehensive plan, show that with such an intellectual and philosophical basis, the place given to natural edges in the city is inevitable and arises from the modernist thinking of that time.
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