Assessing the environmental and physical factors on youth presence in urban passes (Case Study: Afif Abad Street in Shiraz City)

Urban passages are one of the most important urban spaces that have long been the main focus of citizens’ social attendance, particularly the youth. Young people can increase the dynamism and vitality of these spaces with their purposeful attendance. It is of great significance today to address the issue of young people’s attendance of urban spaces and its relationship with architectural components. It is an important step in reduction of the problems of the youth to identify the roles played by these elements in their attendance of passages. Their interaction with other citizens in the streets of the city of Shiraz, Iran can increase the vitality of the urban spaces and provide them with a valuable opportunity to manage their leisure time. The main purpose of this research was to assess the impacts of architectural elements on young people’s attendance of urban spaces. These elements include the shapes of the urban buildings, their colors, flooring types, furniture, and land use variety, and the locations and shapes of the gardens and fountains. The area under investigation is Afifabad Street in Shiraz. The street is 950 meters long and 13 meters wide with about 11 meters of sidewalk on each side. It extends from Qasr al-Dasht Intersection to Afifabad Garden. This urban passage provides a crowded, powerful commercial texture with shopping attraction. This study was aimed at investigating the environmental and functional quality components of its architectural design in order to increase youngsters’ attendance of urban passages. For evaluation of the impacts of physical architectural elements on young people’ attendance of urban passages and their liveliness in this applied research, expert views on the components of urban attendance were first identified through library and documentary studies with an emphasis on the youth. Then, the physical elements that enhance attendance of urban passages were examined, followed by an identification of the components of its reinforcement. In this descriptive-analytical research, the required data were collected through questionnaires obtained from a random sample of 400 respondents that resided, did business, or walked in Afifabad Street. The statistical analysis of the questionnaires was made using SPSS 24, and the important factors related to the environmental components were obtained using the method of factor analysis. The findings demonstrated that the urban furniture element was correlated with some other components such as public and welfare services, environmental components, functional characteristics, safety, and security. Spatial diversity and physical components were found to exhibit the greatest impacts on the attempt to increase young people’s attendance of Afifabad Street, where the correlation coefficient of the relationship was 0.64. It should also be noted that the factors most important to the youth included the concern for the cleanliness of the urban environment and the availability of public services, which can motivate their attendance of the urban area.