The organization of walkable areas with a view to improving urban design qualities, case study: " Saff" Street, Tehran

Being one of main subjects of urban areas, motor vehicles have brought a lot of difficulties to the urban fabric. With rising of motor vehicles, the real meaning of cities has vanished. Thus walkability has become one of the major concerns in urban planning however due to lack of information and experiences to understand the factors affecting the degree of walkability in cities and neighborhoods. If these roads have low environmental quality, people won’t spend their time there. The aim of this study is to declare strategies to improve quality of these places. Hence, by using literature review, factors involved in improving the quality of environment identified and the hypothetical model was developed. To test the model validity, it was presented to experts in this field. The model was modified duo to their comments so that it would be appropriate and indigenous to nature of the case. The final model which is based on Canter model, consist of three dimensions including environmental, functional and aesthetic. The case chosen is a walkable street named “Saf” in Tehran city. To run the appraisal procedure, SWOT model- a renowned analytical system- was used to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. According to analysis, street is in the inappropriate position, weakness and threats are more powerful than other cases. So it is situated in TW position and the solution are presented for this special condition to expunge the weaknesses and moderate threats .In order to achieve the research goal which is environmental quality improvement, guidelines are suggested to regulate the environment with a view to eliminate weaknesses and possibilities of threats. For each quality, special solution are presented. They are proposed to provide the ground to implement a walkable area in which commercial and recreational activities associated with it, would become more thriving.