Assessment of Renovation and Conversation Planning of Project Mechanism in Traditional Neighborhood Regarding to the Environmental Quality,Case Study: Julan Neighborhood in Hamadan, Iran

Neighborhoods are not only a physical structure facts, but also they have various social and cultural aspects that if one of them are not taken into account in urban conservation and renovation projects, they will face with some basic problems. Urban quality of life is a notion that has been discussed recently in various studies as a response to many problems facing the neighborhoods all over the world. Urban spaces and neighborhoods show the participation of citizens in city life. There is a mutual influence between degrade the quality of urban spaces and degrade the quality of urban life which shows the scale of this problem in the old areas. In order to enhance environmental quality of neighborhoods in old and traditional structures, suggestions have been presented in the most of the cities of Iran. The subject of these plans were improvement and renovation. But most of these methods and approaches could not work properly. Therefore recognition and using the most effective criteria and indexes are necessary for improving the environmental quality in residential neighborhoods. This article aims to examine to what extend urban renovation projects have affected on environmental quality of traditional neighborhoods by evaluating Julan case study in Hamedan. This study seeks to answer the following questions: How much was the improvement process successful in Julan neighborhood? Which factors are effective to improve environmental quality in the Julan neighborhood Hamedan in the process of modernization? Julan is an old quarter and like other old neighborhoods faces with problems. Some of these problems are lack of facilities, inaccessibility and etc..So modernization plan was proposed but it did not work. One of the reasons is the planners’ more attentions to the physical dimensions and fewer attentions to centers and activity walk axes. Another reason is lack of integration of housing complexes. The neighborhood is divided into two parts by the street. Modernization plan has more attentions to the northern half of the district. In this article environmental quality of north and south of Julan were compared and also the effects of modernization on environmental quality have been investigated. This paper seeks to measure the environmental quality after the implementation of reconstruction projects. This article reviews the theoretical foundations that include: The old district and the recognition criteria, approaches and interventions in distressed areas, and environmental quality and its indexes. Some specification of old neighborhoods mentioned in this article are: functional, skeletal, communication network, environmental, economic, social, infrastructure, legal and management. Different types of interventions in distressed areas are improvement, renovation and reconstruction. Environmental quality contains wide dimensions which the dimensions in each country, city and the neighborhood is different and even environmental quality can be different from the perspective of a person. Components for environmental quality should be chosen that old areas dealing with them and as an indicator of old areas have been identified. Environmental quality has objective criteria and subjective factors. Objective criteria contains safety, facilities, accessibility and built spaces. Subjective factors contains vitality, social links and security. This research used surveying method and questionnaire forms. This article was done by research-applicable method and data is gathered by questionnaires. Sample volume is 393 respondents that have chosen randomly. 204 were related to the part that has not improvement and renovation and 189 were related to the part that has improvement and renovation. It should be noted that the population of this area has been associated with increased population density in hectare. Moreover, data was analyzed by Amos software. Therefore, Identifying and applying effective indicators for improvement environmental quality in residential neighborhoods appeared to be necessary. Data analysis argued that although objective environmental quality of Julan has enhanced along conservation process, but the rate is very low. There is not any significant change in some subjective indicators of Julan such as vitality and security, while a dramatic declining has occurred in social bonds indicators. In fact, Julan conservation and renovation project has not achieved any success in recognition expectations and image. So, studying causes of weakness in conservation and renovation projects can solve such problems in preparing future plans in traditional contexts. At the end suggestions are provided to improve the quality of residential environment, such as: functional diversity to promote and provide vitality in neighborhoods, providing services and facilities to the residents, reducing the neighborhood traffic, improving the quantity of public spaces such as library, parks and gardens, increasing social security and create a local social bonds.