A Comparative Study of Eco-revelation in Two Residential Areas near Darakeh River Valley: Darakeh Urban Village and Shahrak Gharb

Urban development as a new component of the existing natural ecosystem transforms the ecological function, and deteriorate its quality and ecosystem services. The negative impacts of these changes shall be minimized and accessibility and the experience of the natural environment by the people shall continue. Enhancing the experience of the natural environment by the residents of a city affects their mental, spiritual and physical health and, by influencing the environmental awareness, knowledge and attitudes, encourages the pro-environmental and protective behavior. Eco-revelation, with an emphasis on improving the quality of the natural environment, reconsidering the impacts of human activities on ecological health levels and facilitating the perception and experience of the people from it, is one of the most appropriate approaches in response to this issue.The main purpose of this paper is to measure the impacts of the built environment on eco-revelation quality of the environment. For this purpose, we have selected two residential areas with different urban forms within the city of Tehran and in the vicinity of the Darakeh River valley. The first area has been organically created over time as a village and the second area has been planned and designed based on urban planning and regulations. The location of these two areas in the vicinity of the river valley has caused research samples to have approximately similar ecological qualities. We have used a questionnaire survey to determine the eco-revelation quality, i.e. perception of the households living in these two residential areas of natural environment quality. The perception of households was measured using a Likert scale. Moreover, some questions were asked to determine the knowledge of nearby residents from living species was. In last part of the questionnaire, demographic factors such as age, sex, duration of residence, ownership, education and childhood experiences were also requested. The results indicated that the eco-revelation quality was significantly different between the two studied areas, despite their relatively similar natural and ecological characteristics. The perceptual experiences of people varied significantly for all aspects of eco-revelation, except for naturalness. The perception of changing seasons and entertainment along with the imageability of the natural environment has had the greatest impact on the difference between two studied residential areas in terms of eco-revelation. In addition, enhancing eco-revelation quality will result in increasing the awareness and knowledge of individuals. That means that people with a higher perception of eco-revelation quality have more knowledge about plants and animal species. This suggests that the organic environment versus the planned environment dramatically enhances the opportunity to experience the natural environment, and the eco-revelation quality in this kind of environment that is intertwined and connected with nature is much higher. Eco-revelation quality has to be assessed as one of the essential qualities of the environment and accordingly, the built environment shall be designed to maintain ecological functions of the natural environment and to increase ecological perceptual experience and awareness.