Investigating the river-Oriented sustainable public Places and the effective factors‎(Case studies: Balikhlo, Zayandeh rood, Karoon and Zarjoob)‎

Often in our country, rivers face levels of unsustainability and challenge the urban spaces based on ‎them. The main mission of this study is to provide the foundation to develop these urban spaces into sustainable ‎river-based public p‌‌‌‌‌laces. This study seeks to explain macro-qualitative criteria, effective factors, and conceptual ‎model of “sustainable river-oriented public places” and provide comparative study of the status of urban rivers in the ‎country.‎

This developmental-applied research uses qualitative and quantitative approaches ‎simultaneously. In this regard, a library study was utilized to extract the concepts and theoretical model, and field and ‎case study methods were utilized to assess the quality of river-based public places in Ardabil, Isfahan, Ahvaz and ‎Rasht. While conducting field surveys, via semi-structured observations and interviews with people and completion of ‎closed questionnaires, required data for describing and analyzing the status and comparisons of case samples was ‎collected. One-sample T-test and Smirnov test were used to validate the results.‎

Factors such as rivers, humans, laws, resources, activists, society, cities, and so on, in the life cycle of ‎a sustainable river-centered public space, will affect its viability, survival and growth. These factors, in turn, fulfill the ‎expected qualities of such spaces. The macro criteria including resilience, sustainability, anthropomorphism and ‎individuality, and other micro criteria fit into them

Comparative comparisons of case studies show that despite the people’s sense of belonging to the ‎rivers, there are less or more some common weaknesses in them in the areas of sustainability, security and safety, ‎facilities, river resilience, etc. Thus, accordingly, recommendations have been proposed to address the major ‎weaknesses of these public places. The applications of this study can be considered in formulating a checklist for ‎evaluation, planning, designing and quality improvement, for developed or under development ‎sustainable river-oriented public spaces.‎