It is widely claimed that there was a clear spatial continuity in the evolution of the traditional Middle Eastern city, with every new development the result of an intelligent, albeit unplanned, evolution of pre-existing doctrines of construction. However, as far as the new Safavid urban development of seventeenth-century Isfahan (in Iran) is concerned, it is possible to distinguish a spatial fragmentation, in terms of urban pattern and urban structure, between the old texture and new extensions.
Figure 6a Organic geometry of the Old Isfahan in contrast to the imposed regular geometry of the Safavid developments; 6b: organic geometry of the Old Isfahan; 6c: bottom-up appropriation of the imposed geometry at the micro scale; based on Seyed-Reza-Khan Map.