A review of the research conducted on the subject of Iran’s development in recent years confirms the significance and necessity of paying attention to sustainable rural development as one of the fundamental bases for urban and national sustainable development. Through a review of the pathology of today’s villages, some issues are encountered like physical, economic, cultural-social, environmental and energy supply problems. Paying attention to each of these problems and giving proper suggestions can help the improvement of the quality and the nature of Iran’s villages and can pave the way for their renewed prosperity and development.

Since securing the whole or part of energy demand of human communities from renewable energy resources is one of the principles of sustainable development, the issue and question of current research is defined as the study and evaluation of biogas technology for supplying portions of energy demand of stockbreeding-based rural communities of Iran from a low price energy source and solving the environmental problems due to incorrect management on collecting and discharging rural waste. The first part of this paper is devoted to a literature review which introduces in brief the biogas technology and discusses its potential advantages. The second part of the paper is a case study of Galesh-Kolam village, in Gilan province in northern Iran. The main reasons why this village was chosen to be studied were its priority in the relevant plan for rural waste management, the serious problem of contamination of local underground water, having no access to the national network of urban gas, and the stockbreeding livelihood of its people.

The paper here investigates the potential of using biogas technology to reduce the dependence of the rural families to their current energy supply resources. A field survey is conducted to do this. A sample of the households of the village was selected and the number of their cows and sheep was counted. The possible produced biogas by this amount of cows and sheep was calculated and its equivalent energy value determined.

In order to calculate the probable saving in the households ' current energy supply, two methods were used. In the first method, the energy demand in the cookery and hot water sections of households were calculated. According to the calculations done, the biogas technology could provide about twenty eight percent of an average family's annual energy demand for cookery and hot water.

In the second method, the saving in energy was calculated for the cookery, hot water, and heating of the building according to the relevant standards and building regulations of Iran. The calculations indicated that the rural families can enjoy a seventeen to forty percent saving in their current energy supply resources.

The paper concludes with a discussion on the findings of the research and puts forward some suggestions on the development of biogas technology in the villages of Iran.

The recognition and categorization of various types of architecture can lead to a better understanding of the environment,  its conservation, and the establishment of new design methods.

Gilan province is in the north of Iran and in the southern coasts of the Caspian  Sea. High humidity and excessive rainfall are the major properties of Gilan province which are the main reasons for the formation of architecture and urbanization in this region. The human settlements on the Caspian sea coasts  have special architectural features. Valuable instances of these complexes can be observed in Talesh city, which is 100 kilometres from Gilan province (Rasht), and especially in Khalehsara 57 village, which is 15 Kilometres from the county seat (Talesh city). This paper tries to investigate the architectural typology of Khalehsara 57 village. The data were collected by desk studies and field observations and among the population of 495 residential buildings, 90 traditional houses with valuable architectural properties were analysed. Therefore, the status quo of the village was described first then, structural elements of the buildings, existing environments in the buildings, and typology of the village were studies. The results of this study showed that the development of the buildings were formed in the village from east to west and then in high altitude based on climatic priorities. Generally, three architecture patterns are found in the texture of Khalehsara 57 village including high-based houses, houses with Telar, and Gholam Gardeshi houses. Seventy three percent of the houses were high-based houses, and they were the most frequent pattern in the texture of Khalehsara 57 village. Twenty four percent of the houses were houses with Telar which were less accepted by the villagers  due to high expenses of the execution. Three percent of the houses were Gholam Gardeshi houses which was the last type of the houses with regard to frequency in the typology of the buildings of the Khalehsara 57 village.

The rural skeletal texture in Gilan province like the other regions is influenced by the various natural, climatic, economic and social/cultural factors. It is clear that these factors impact on each other too. But this paper topic is the impact of the social/cultural factors on the skeletal characteristics of biological and rural systems. This paper is seeking to find an answer to the social/cultural factors influencing the texture of Gilan villages and the characteristics of the impact on its skeletal structure.

This paper, which is based on an applied developmental research with a descriptive/casual study's strategy, focuses on a case study on Gilan province. It uses some documentary evidences and literature on the one hand and investigates the social/cultural conditions and the concept of rural skeleton from a holistic perspective on the other hand. In the most sections, the theoretical basis of this qualitative research is according to the structuralism paradigm and it is independent of common literature and documentation. The field study data of the paper have been collected from 150 villages of Gilan among 2800 residential villages during 14 years. These villages have been selected among the different cultural areas in the east and the west of Gilan and the climate zones in the mountains, foothills, plains and shorelines in order to make a generalization to the other regions of Gilan. In this paper, at first the social factors influencing the settlements' skeleton was generally investigated and then, the architecture of Gilan province's villages has been studied in terms of social/cultural characteristics and some of its most important aspects were explained.

The research findings indicate that the rural people's social interactions are influenced by the natural conditions on the one hand and are based on economic characteristics and livelihood practices on the other hand. This issue itself is one of the factors to coordinate the social actions and leads to integrate the rural residents' social and cultural relations. All of these factors create a homogeneous skeletal texture that has been made in response to the same social, cultural, livelihood and climatic demands. The basic elements of the human societies in Gilan province's villages include the population, culture, material products, technology, social systems and social institutions that have a significant impact on the rural skeletal characteristics such as land-use, streets network, neighborhood classification system, and architectural structure. These factors along with the skeletal form of residential complex lead to the social and personal authentication that not only is influenced by the culture and living methods, but also it establishes some requirements for the residential skeleton that is resulted from the human significant social actions.