The impact of quality indicators of residential environment perception on ongoing social interaction in Bagh-Shater neighborhood of Tehran

The quality of perception of the residential environment as a tool for urban planners to promote and organize the environment promotes social interaction. Using Bonito, Fornara and Bones in 2003, the effect of residential quality perception components on continuous social interaction was explained using double regression. Among the indicators, the highest impact factor belongs to the maintenance and care of the environment, the attachment and urban streets respectively. Modelling of perceived residential quality index effects on continuous social interactions have been confirmed and explains nearly half the variations of social interaction. There is a significant relationship between social interaction and the quality of the perception of residential environment in the Bagh Shater. 

A tool for urban planners to improve and organize the environment of residence, the quality of its perception can provide the requirements for the formation and promotion of social interaction. The obligations of neighborhoods and neighborhood units include the provision of a tool to enhance social interaction and of a place for citizens to meet each other and the management and coordination of civic activities. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to investigate the effects of the indicators of residential environment quality perception on continuous social interaction.

A factor that affects the quality of life involves the establishment of an appropriate level of collective and social interaction in living environments. The perceived quality of the residential environment is defined as the experience of life satisfaction and happiness. Likewise, the process of perceiving the urban environment is a determining factor in an individual’s image drawn and stored of his surrounding environment, and plays a fundamental role in the formation of his residential environment and his satisfaction with it. Environmental perception is a process where one chooses the required data according to his needs from the environment. Environmental quality is complex, and includes the mental perceptions, attitudes, and values of different groups and individuals. The quality of the environment can be defined as a fundamental part of the broader concept of quality of life. The process of social interaction is the key to the perception of social processes. Environment information is achieved through perceptual processes that are evoked by mental images and guided by human needs. Finally, perception of these processes can help to measure the effects of residential environment perception on social interaction.

To investigate the effect of the perceived residential quality indicator on continuous social interaction, this research used the descriptive-analytic procedure and the survey method. The population of the case study involved the inhabitants of the Bagh-Shater neighborhood in Tehran, Iran. The sample size was selected based on factors such as location and urban planning and architecture features. First, the indicators and components of perceived residential quality were assessed, and the qualifications of the perceived residential environment quality indicator were then studied using Bonaiuto, Fornara, and Bonnes’s (2003) questionnaire. Finally, the effect of the residential quality indicator on continuous social interaction was analyzed.

The results demonstrated that modeling the effects of the perceived residential quality indicator on continuous social interaction confirmed and explained nearly half of the variations therein. The indicators with the highest impact factors included the maintenance and care of the environment, attachment to the place, and urban streets, in that order. With respect to the main hypothesis of the study, there was a significant relationship between social interaction and the quality of perception of the residential environment in Bagh-Shater. This resulted in a positive, almost high correlation between the quality of environmental perception and social interaction, which increased as the quality of environmental perception rose. Based on the obtained results, the best policy to improve continuous social interaction was to enhance the capacity of local communities, thus enabling individuals to maintain the neighborhood spaces where they lived.

The results obtained on the effect of attachment to social interaction were in line with Fisher’s (1977). Accordingly, this could be associated to a large extent with the way in which an individual has established social relations with people and social institutions. If it can facilitate the flow of citizenship through man’s sense of attachment to the environment, urban space can serve to improve continuous social interaction and, consequently, the quality of the residential environment. The results of this study were in line with the views of Peter Kaltrop (1989) and the new principles and guidelines of urban planning, which have considered the creation of neighborhood units with high walkability as the main factor in establishment of social interactions and enhancement of environmental quality. Moreover, they were consistent with the promotion of social interactions according to the results of Torabi and Rafieian’s research, based on the significant impact of the sociability of space, which is a physical characteristic of space, indicating the effect of the environmental quality in promotion of social interactions. This alignment can also be accounted for by the structure of the network of passages and the general ossification of the neighborhood, which plays an important role in formation of appropriate spaces compatible with social interactions despite its old, distressed quality.