A Comparative Study of Environmental Quality between Pedestrian Malls and Traditional Bazaars, Case Studies: 15 Khordad Pedestrian Mall and Tehran Old Bazaar

Nowadays public Spaces are one of the key elements for enhancing the quality of life in cities that they have special station on city structure. Bazaars are one of these spaces which have old background in Iran. In the past, these spaces actioned as an economic, social, and religious heart in city and created a part of city structure, but gradually and by growing the cities and creating new commercial centers in different place, old bazaars were faced with physical and functional exhaustion. At the same time as reducing quality in centers of big cities, pedestrianization approach has considered in order to reducing the dominance of cars on city center and returning vitality to it. Creating the public spaces for pedestrians was raised within the framework of the pedestrianization approach, that an example of them was formed as a pedestrian malls. The pedestrian malls are one of the most important of pedestrian streets in city centers that they pursue various economic and social goals. All these show that both pedestrian mall and traditional bazaar are shaped
by the same function and they are known as a public space. In recent years, traditional bazaars and pedestrian streets have been welcomed by the people despite shortcomings. However, if public spaces are improved, they will be the best place for spending leisure time on holidays. Hence, we must identify the strengths and weaknesses of these spaces and provide strategies for organizing them. This research compares the environmental quality indicators in 15 Khordad pedestrian mall and Tehran old bazaar. We did this research through descriptive-analytical method based on documental and case studies. Research theoretical is obtained through library studies and subject indicators has been extracted in the table. In the next step, we have analyzed the indicators in the case studies and we have specified environmental quality main factors of pedestrian mall and bazaar with a factor analysis method. For this purpose, we extracted 24 indicators in relation to environmental quality of urban public space from valid word texts. In order to assess the research hypothesis, we choose two case studies including 15 Khordad pedestrian mall and old bazaar in Tehran, and then we test the indicators in them. For this purpose, we designed the questionnaire based on extracted indicators. In questionnaire, we designed questions for each of the indicators which were mentally and based on five-level Likert method. We considered 200 questionnaire based on the Neyman sampling test in order to validity for SPSS analysis (The number of questionnaires are 8 times more than the number of indicators). So we considered 100 questionnaires for 15 Khordad pedestrian street and 100 questionnaires for old bazaar. After completing questionnaires, we input data to SPSS software for analyzing them with factor analysis, extracting main factors, and calculating case studies scores. The early extracted from factor analysis shows 6 main factors for environmental quality of pedestrian street and old bazaar that contain 68 percent of their variance. Therefore, we named factors based on relationship between various indicators. Accordingly, the main factors explaining the environmental quality of Pedestrian Street and bazaar include Responsibility, Image & Landscape, Walkability, Activity & Performance, Socialization, and Accessibility. After that, we calculated standard factor scores to comparison the environmental quality of Pedestrian Street and bazaar, that shows environmental quality of 15 Khordad Pedestrian mall is a little bit better than old bazaar. More detailed results show that pedestrian mall is relative superiority than bazaar in 4 factors: Activity & Performance, Accessibility, Responsibility, and Walkability; and on the contrary, the bazaar is relative superiority than pedestrian mall in 2 factors: Socialization and Image & Landscape. The results of this research can be used to provide operational strategies and improve the quality of these spaces. Therefore, the main strategies for promoting the environmental quality of old bazaars are “mixing land uses and increasing retail sales”, “provision of accommodation, catering, and sanitation facilities”, organizing commercial sub-street”, selling traditional handicrafts”, “restoration of national and religious ceremonies in the bazaar”, increasing permeability to bazaar”, “improving quantitative and qualitative public transport access to bazaar”, “organize and redefine bazaar inputs”, “parking facilities for cars and bicycles”. The main strategies for promoting the environmental quality of pedestrian malls are “using Iranian-Islamic design principles for space design”, “attracting private participation for space conservation”, “creating pauses and rest spaces along the path”, “designing human scale retails”, “protecting valuable buildings”, “preventing environmental perturbation”, “encouraging people and business to keep the environment clean”, paying attention to the conditions of the environment and pedestrians in different weather conditions”.