Evaluation of Sense of Community in Residential Complexes(Case study: Saidyeh complex of Hamadan)

Community architecture, as a novel approach in architecture, has changed throughout ages. This approach has many concepts which have increased and decreased during the times, but the main concept of community architecture has always been the indirect participation of people in designing. Also, public spaces and stability have recently been added to these new parameters. Among three approaches available in the architecture including political, social and psychological ones, the one that is strongly related to community architecture is a fundamental aspect named sense of community. Sense of community is often defined as a feeling of belonging to a group of members. A feeling that shows the members matter to one another and to the group, and a common faith that ensures that the members needs will be met through their commitment to a unity. Sense of community has two important parts. The first part is individual and the second part is collective. Gender, age, education, level of income and ownership are related to the individual level, while membership, influence, Integration and fulfillment of needs, shared emotional connection are related to the collective part. Public spaces are the most important spaces which could increase the sense of community. They are recognized as being accessible to all groups, providing freedom of action for users. Some changes in modern society may lead to a decrease in the sense of community in public spaces of residential complexes. For instance, most of the people do not like to be present in public spaces for participating and using of facilities of them, or technology and media prevent people from being together. In this new condition, the sense of community will slowly disappear. This is a big problem for all countries all over the world. Identifying and creating the conditions that foster and strengthen sense of community within public spaces of residential complex is an important task for us. We can make suitable conditions to encourage people for coming in public spaces of residential complex and share their needs and beliefs through designing methods. The reduction in this context could be empowered by the presence and participation of people. Thus, we classify our data in two tables. The first table shows design methods in community design with behavioral patterns and performance of spaces, and in the second table some methods for making better facilities to public spaces of residential complex presents have been presented. The only residential complex with public spaces in Hamadan is Saidyeh complex. We have divided the site of this complex into some parts, and observe them for 5 months. 65 persons were randomly selected and interviewed about their needs. A table is drawn according to performance of spaces, behavioral patterns, designing methods and style of investigation (interview or observation). This study aims at examining the collected information through a qualitative method and evaluates the selected samples (through targeted sampling) and compares them with table of designed parameters. As a result, we concluded that the climate and culture could affect community architecture in Hamadan.... Keywords: Community Architecture, Community Feeling, Environmental Psychology.