Assessment of Establishment of Education Spaces by Mixed Model of TOPSIS and Shannon Entropy

Educational spaces are considered as the most important urban areas. Determining the optimal establishment of schools in urban areas is one of the duties of urban planners. In the recent years، increasing urbanization caused poor arrangement of educational spaces، so that urban population has difficulties in accessing to the education. In spite of the important role of educational spaces in the quality of education and their great effects on applying educational programs، little attention was paid to location and organization of educational spaces in Iran، like the most of the developing countries. In fact، population areas are spatially resulted from natural، social، economic and physical relations، which are organized in the natural environment، and social and economic activities with interactions between human beings and the environment. If the service centers، especially educational centers، are located properly، this correlation will be higher. To establish appropriate and reasonable educational facilities، efficient use of scientific and sufficient methods would be necessary. The reason for this is that use of precise quantitative tools makes it possible to evaluate more precisely the establishment of schools being studied in this research. The examination about how female schools are established in the second educational region of Zanjan was conducted by a combined model taking into account outdoor spaces and classrooms per capita، accessibility، building date and traffic safety. Therefore، this is an applied research with descriptive-analytical method. Statistical population is whole population and the students in the scope of the second educational region of Zanjan city، separated by the areas and blocks. In the present research، the sample is the very same statistical population. The research method is descriptive – analytical and necessary data for the research were gathered through detailed library studies، documents، observation، questionnaire، and field works. The status of physical، economic، social and administrative domains was also studied. The objective of the present paper is to analyze educational locations in secondary schools of the second educational region in Zanjan city and to evaluate the current situation of educational spaces. Furthermore، it is tried to develop an optimal model in order to establish educational spaces properly and to increase efficiency and convenience of their utilization in the spatial levels. The results of the study revealed that current location of most of the studied schools do not meet standards for educational facilities. Various factors should be considered in proper establishment of the schools. Some of the schools are fixed and others are variable، that is، some of them may change over time and others remain unchanged. Most of the schools established in the center of city have higher age and many of them were constructed with materials of low resistance. These schools are among the places with lower range of outdoor and classroom per capita relative to common standards. Moreover، they often are located in crowded and dangerous places for the students. The most incompatibility is related to the schools located on the crowded streets resulting in several problems such as noise and air pollution and crashes occurring to the students by passing vehicles. According to the distribution of educational spaces in female secondary schools، it was noticed that most schools are not distributed according to the requirements of student population and cannot meet the real needs of the studied school. There is no female secondary school in the east and north-east part of the second educational region of Zanjan. The results of weighting of final matrix showed that the whole rate of minimum accessibility (0. 1635) in relation to the highest rate (0. 7942) is in very high level. This shows the superiority and dominance of the potential weaknesses compared with the capabilities. This indicated that the existing capacities were not used properly to overcome the weaknesses. The greatest difficulties in educational areas are related not only to the buildings and non-standard areas but also to their location and inconvenience in the student access to the educational spaces. These findings suggest the superiority and dominance of the weaknesses in comparison with the capacities of the studied schools. Moreover، the final weighting matrix showed that six schools out of the 12 ones received the lowest rates of accessibilities. Due to the factors affecting the construction of the educational buildings، it is proposed that we should not consider simply one factor in construction of educational space. For example، the number of students or depreciation of the space or the year of its construction، all should be considered and all aspects should be evaluated systematically to build a school. Some existing educational spaces have some problems such as their inappropriate location in incompatible land use، particularly those with high traffic routes; lack of the possibility to change the use of adjacent spaces; and impossibility to move educational units from the existing educational facilities to other convenient location. Therefore، the simplest، most cost-effective and practical solutions to solve the mentioned problems are use of double-glazed windows; planting dense trees to reduce noise pollution; construction of appropriate area، building proper entrances and good views، and so on. If there are necessary facilities and budget، then the reasonable method will be used to change incompatible land use in educational neighborhood areas or to transfer the educational units to a proper place. It is difficult to alter the adjacent inappropriate educational environments. Dealing with land uses on the rivers and crowded streets would be appropriate to adopt such measures as change in the location and the entrance and exit direction of doors in educational areas. These measures can avoid direct contact of students with the main streets، roads، intersections and squares.