Evaluation the Impacts of Urban Elements on Formation of Behavioral Patterns by Emphasizing on Gendered Urban Spaces (Case study: 2th Region of Tehran's Municipality)

Urban spaces are representations of the citizens’ life quality based on the environmental, cultural and social structures. One can come to a clear and general overview on this point by analyzing those structures as parts of the whole city or society. The study of urban spaces from this point of view has been neglected due to several reasons including the easiness of understanding the physical and environmental aspects compared to the meaning and performance of the urban spaces. In other words, the humanistic and phenomenological approaches have not been applied enough in studying the quality of urban spaces. The emphasis on the mentioned approaches has led to recognize the effectiveness of the environment on the human behaviors and activities. Such effectiveness is professionally studied in the field of environmental psychology. Accordingly, this article attempts to provide a theoretical-analytical investigation on the effectiveness of environment on the human behavior emphasizing on those behaviors that are the consequent of limiting the presence of some social groups –especially the women- in the urban spaces which in turn leads to a gendered urban spaces. From the methodological point of view, this study is a strategic-urban research with an applied method retrieved from the results of descriptive-inferential and library-based studies based on which our model is formed. The theoretical framework of this research is based on the ecological theory and Lang’s Positive Concept theory. Among the perception-relevant theories we have used the Probabilistic Functionalism theory of Brunswik, Gibson’s theory of Environmental Capabilities, and Berlain’s theory of environmental attractive characteristics. On the other hand, in relation to the gender-oriented urban spaces we have used Lefebvre’s theory of differential spaces. Moreover, we have referred to Moon, Rockefeller, Koskela, and Tonkiss approaches, particularly the Rapoport’s nonverbal approach. The accuracy of hypothesis has investigated by using Structural Equational Modeling (SEM) especially Partial Least Square (PLS) method in Smart PLS and SPSS software. In addition bootstrapping, Confirmatory factor analysis, Cross Validated Redundancy (CV red.), Cross Validated Communality (CV com.), t- value test, Stone-Geisser’s Q² value and GOF index have been evaluated. Comparing significant level of meaning, function and form of urban space (3.403, 2.405 and 6.085) also the relation between behavioral pattern s and gendered space (8.725) with acceptable level (1.96) shows the accuracy of hypothesis. Findings of this research show that the environment acts as a behavioral headquarter based on which there is a specific relationship between the physical aspects and behavioral patterns, manifesting the emergence of relatively similar behaviors in different times by different people. If we manage to identify the effective environmental factors on the behavior, then we would be able to plan the capabilities of the environment for forming or preventing the specific behavioral patterns. All people use the space desirably with regard to their own perceptions, needs and motivations. People add new meanings to the space and create the social space through reproduction of the spaces. Spatial and symbolic divisions are the result of the mentioned process and they can encourage or discourage the presence of some social groups like the women. Accordingly, they can affect the formation of the gender-based geography of the cities. This gendered geography is defined by the meanings and signs rather than its physical aspects.