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 With a philosophical shift from the concept of sustainability, this research sets its goal for introducing a theoretical platform for understanding the behavior of the built environment from an ecological viewpoint. During the recent two decades, sustainability has been practically defined with many variations and sustainable development has been misinterpreted many times as the sum total of individual attempts for improvement in different areas of action. Occasionally, with an inclination towards economy, mainly consumer-driven growth model, sustainability failed to target the synergic patterns inside systems and seemed to be more of a compensation science [30]. In this regard, sustainable development became a confrontation between human and earth within which man tries to secure his economic future only by trying to scientifically predict the linear consequences of his actions and minimize the potential risks. Considering the tremendous level of complexity in the socio-economic and the environmental systems, such an attempt is doomed to failure. A proper approach would be acknowledging the nature of the systems and move along with accordance to their principles. 

Ecology, on the other hand, is the science of integration between the systems. It seems to be a more sensible development context since it concerns with recognizing the relationships and observing the structure of the system. Therefore, an ecological development means a practice of growth that meets the needs of man in total integration with the ecological system of which man himself is a part.  Clearly, the judgment whether a piece of built environment could be considered ecologically sustainable or not is a matter of performance. Thus, any methodology claiming for ecological sustainability must offer tangible mechanisms for evaluating the system’s performance. 

Depended on the lifecycle of the system, defined boundary and the purpose of the assessment, the evaluation processes might vary widely. However, just like any other system, most of the methods for evaluating the built environment are structured around comparable indicators. Relying on the existing evaluation methods, the chief focus of this doctoral research would be on understanding the systemic structure of the built environment from which the performance is being originated.  For this, it is necessary to investigate the patterns of relationship between systemic configuration and the resulting performance.

 According to the System Theory, there are four properties common in all types of systems: 1. They are composed of elements; 2. There is a relationship between elements; 3. There is a certain function associated with any system (however, many systems including built environment are multi-final systems meaning that numerous functions are associated with them); and 4. There is a boundary defined for any system \citep{Ramage_2009}.  It is crucial to notice that the functioning manner of any system is fundamentally directed from the relationship between the parts. Therefore, the way that the elements relate to each other plays a much more decisive role than the elements themselves. All the cities on the planet composed of common elements such as buildings, parks, roads and streets, transportation means, parking areas etc. yet no two cities are to be found to share the exact same performance. For the functioning manner roots from the rather hidden dimension of relationships, any attempt for controlling the performance of the build environment systems by solely working on the level of the elements will be ultimately facing methodological conflicts in theory and unforeseen consequences in practice.

This study refers to Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM) as its theoretical skeleton and works to refine the structural links between the Investigation and Formulation phases through a numerical modeling methodology.  IMM recognizes the built environment as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) \citep{Manesh_2011} comprised of numerous subsets and many variables interacting in various levels, various scales, and a diverse set of subcategories. Rendering the CAS’s nature, a mere local action accrued in an individual subset will produce a chain reaction within the network of its parts and trigger a process which consequently leads to the global change of the entire system. In other words, system agents adapt themselves in response to the complex network of reactions arisen from individual changes [28]. 

 

IMM is based on a nonlinear phasing process involving the following structure \citep{Manesh_2013}: