Process of Resident's affective appraisal of pace of physical changes in residential environments from user's points of view based on satisfaction criteria. Case study: Niavaran neighborhood

Residential areas are constantly changing. Some of these changes occur in an environment’s evolutionary process over time. Urban design pays particular attention to the process of structural transformation in the residential environments for improving the quality of life; environments that have experienced various paces of physical change in the periods of transformation. Therefore, for evaluating environmental qualities, it is necessary to obtain the residents’ assessments of the incongruence and consecutive cycles of buildings construction at different paces. In recent decades, many neighborhoods in Tehran have had substantial physical changes as a result of increasing pace of urban development.
The main question of this research is how people experience the impact of physical changes at different paces and what those criteria are. Other questions examinethe relationship between affective-evaluative narration of residents and adaptation to new condition in low to high rate of changes and the indicators that influence satisfaction of experience of different paces of physical changes in the residential environment. Therefore, understanding cycles of construction at different paces leads to assessing the quality of residential environments using residents’ points of view. The purpose of this theoretical framework is understanding the process of experience and evaluating original inhabitants’ satisfaction rating of the pace of physical changes .
Lack of appropriate theoretical framework for understanding the process of evaluating resident's affective appraisal of physical changes in morphological analysis and quantitation of satisfaction to its inefficiency can be considered as relevant theoretical gaps.
This qualitative study was undertaken as a case study research method and accompanied with morphological methods, semi-structured questionnaire and deep interviews for data gathering.
Based on surveys of residents and comparing its results with morphological studies, three groups of alleys that have had low, medium and high pace of physical changes, as units for the field study were selected. 38 original residents of Niavaran were selected for in depth interviews by a purposive sampling of six streets. Age of mental reconstruction was determined as 20 years.
In depth interview questionnaires based on qualitative questions was carried out for data gathering. Analysis of data was performed using phenomenological method. After deploying interviews by theoretical coding method, comparing codes and recognition of the differences and similarities between them, main issues were extracted.
The results shows that while the pace and intensity of change is controlled and context values are stable, the residents have shown sympathy to context identities and nostalgia that is gradually forming in frameworks reference. However, the residents’ sensitivity to high pace and intensity of change gradually reduced. Amongst the residents that have experienced the different intensities of physical change, meaningful observations were made in terms of sensitivity toward the primary shape of living space. It seems residents’ experience of changes at different intensities is influenced by a series of conditions and fields. Highlighting the importance of physical space in understanding and interpreting residents’ experiences of high paced change, causes the physical to convert into a criterion for determining the type and intensity of change.
The theoretical framework for understanding the physical changes creates an opportunity for urban planners and urban designers to write physical policies based on residents’ points of view of process of physical changes from low to high pace.
Because of the qualitative nature of the evaluation which obtains data regarding residents’ experience in different environments , it can be a good basis for meta-analysis studies and can achieve a theoretical framework responsive to the conditions of similar environments in Tehran metropolis.