Investigation of the Role of Urban Spaces in Achieving Sustainable Development: Describing Communication Paradigm

Public space has always been a key research area across a wide spectrum of disciplines including philosophy, urban geography, visual art, cultural studies, social research and urban design and planning. Urban spaces play an important role in the social-economic life of city dwellers and throughout history acted as a center of communication and change. In modern era, public spaces in cities have turned into main business centers from which a particular section of the society is benefiting. This is the result of modernization and all the changes that it has brought about in the society. In fact, rationalization which is a product of the enlightenment era is limited to the rationality of approaches, devices and technology. This reflects a strain of rationality or «instrumental rationality», and it can be sought in the dialectics of man, society and nature the result of which is man’s struggle to overcome nature and then damage it to a great extent. These concerns are today reflected in debates pertaining to «sustainable development». The purpose of this paper is to discover the interactions and connections among the urban space, the sustainable development and the Communication Paradigm which is expected to help explain the above three elements. In order to get there, the role of urban spaces throughout history has been studied particularly with regards to aspects such as society, economy and environmental concerns as emphasized by the principles of sustainable development. A historical review of urban space, its size as well as its production procedure could help better understand the role of urban spaces and the way it could improve sustainable development. This paper investigates the connection between the concepts of urban space and sustainable development using Communicative Action Theory. In this way, the Communication Paradigm as a basis for explaining this connection is described. Thus, using the theory of Communicative Action, the instrumental rationality of modernism has been brought into the spotlight. This theory questions the tenets of modern instrumental rationality and further presents Communicative Rational as a solution to overcome modern problems. This research studies how Communicative Rational is manifested through urban spaces. It has taken into consideration the fact that Communicative Rational could be an approach to overcome the logic of domination and profit as well as a solution to prevent whatever disrupts the orderliness of nature and its various elements as well as their interconnections. Eventually, the Communicative Paradigm is presented as a model based on which urban spaces can be developed based on the principles of sustainable development. This Paradigm will help determine the features of sustainable development and also introduce urban spaces as the beating hearts of cities. Further, it will help promote the social, economic and environmental roles of cities by determining an appropriate set of discourse ethics for urban spaces.