Comparing the Aesthetic Parameters of Urban Space from the Viewpoint of Children and Adults: the case study of Isfahan

Urban space is the context in which the activities and different perception of users take place; but various users such as different age groups have dissimilar perceptions of environment. It seems that the built environment and particularly urban space as the product of work of urban planners, urban designers and architects, does not necessarily consider the real variety of users and through this fact, aesthetic aspect of urban environment does not fulfill their needs fairly. Overlapping of the two domains of environmental psychology and urban aesthetics on the one hand and the diverse psychological characteristics in different age groups on the other hand confirm the necessity of this research. The need for studying urban aesthetics is re-affirmed also from a statistical point of view. In 2010 demographics, out of seven billion of the world’s population, approximately 1.2 billion were children between the ages of 5 and 14. This figure is approximately 17.4 percent of the total world population or one-fifth. The same statistics is shown in Iran where there were roughly 11 million children (5-14 age range) from the total population of 74 million in 2010 which is approximately 15 percent and or one-sixth of the total population. These official statistics are demonstrate the importance children in different fields generally and especially in urban design and urban aesthetic. Studying urban aesthetics from the viewpoint of particular users of urban space like children with different psychological characteristics leads to an introduction to urban aesthetics which is trying to find the answer to the research question. The objective is to identify the aesthetic preferences of children in their surrounding environment, especially in urban spaces. However, there were some limits in this study; the most important limiting factor was the lack of detailed information regarding the social and cultural environment of the statistical sample which could explain differences in children’s points of views. Thus, examining urban spaces from an aesthetic perspective is important because their users have different aesthetic perceptions and urban spaces are not necessarily responsive for all kinds of users. This research answers the following questions: which environmental aesthetic preferences can be recognized in different groups of children and adults, and what are the priorities of related variables in different groups. There are two major approaches to the study of aesthetics, empirical and philosophical. This research is based on the empirical approach according to the importance of visual aspects in urban design. This research has studied the signification of three groups conforming to Santayana’s classification of environmental aesthetics which consists of three categories of emotional, formal and symbolic. The research is applied and descriptive-analytic. Data was collected from library study based on documentary research as well as field observations and children’s drawings. Based on Cochran's C test, 750 effective questionnaires were dispensed in Isfahan city which is the figure for the statistical population. The results were analyzed by Likert-Scale and SPSS software. The findings indicate certain differences exist between the various age groups in their preferences of aesthetic priority and in the importance of formal variables from the viewpoint of children. Of the three mentioned categories of environmental aesthetics, the formal category was most frequently preferred by children.