The role of urban legislation in improving the mental images of the city (Erbil city as case study)

The laws and legislations are the basic tools that affect the performance, accomplishment, and continuity of the developmental objectives of the organizational plans. The rules and standards regulate the resources of urbanization as a material product, in addition, to achieve a kind of harmony and regularity in the urban land scene of the city and provide more space for the cognitive and visual aspect of the recipient who he has mental images of the urban scene through which can select the shape and features of urban identity. It illustrated by the introduction of Iraqi legislation that suffers from multiple problems, evidenced by the lack of legislation in the control of urban growth, and investigating the requirements of visual sustainability not only limited to functional, economic and social aspects. It is an integrated system works to create a sustainable urban environment. Hence, the importance of the development of Iraqi urban legislation representing by preparing the urban area in a new framework, through the control and treatment of its physical components by linking them to cultural, historical and civilizational elements within an appropriate environmental framework. The paper reviewing the urban laws in Erbil city within the previous periods of time as well as the various urban policies used in the city center, to benefit from the knowledge and evaluation of problems, and identify the legislative directions that can be adopted as suggestions for the development of urban legislation within the criteria, take the factors: social, cultural, functional, environmental and aesthetic, at the level of legislation.