Strategies to Improve the Sense of Vitality in Urban Spaces (Case Study: Imam Khomeini St., Urmia)

In the current cities of Iran, most of the passages and public spaces of the neighborhoods have been reduced to the level of passageways and social life has disappeared from them in such a way that they continue to live without any cultural and social burden. This has aggravated their identity crisis and lack of vitality which requires the serious attention of urban planners to improve the sense of vitality in these spaces. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the importance and satisfaction of vitality indicators and items in Imam Khomeini street of Urumia and strategies to strengthen it are provided. The research is descriptive-analytical in terms of method and practical in terms of purpose. Data collection has been done in the form of a field survey and questionnaire. The research indicators include socio-cultural, physical-spatial, and economic-welfare indicators. The statistical population of research includes all the users of this space, and the sample size is 384 people by using Cochran's formula. The validity of the questionnaires has been verified by experts and its reliability by using Cronbach's alpha test with a coefficient of 0.751. In order to analyze the information, Walker's (1996) satisfaction-importance matrix model has been used to identify the level of satisfaction and importance of each of the research indicators and propose policies to improve their situation. According to the research results, in the cultural-social dimension, the items "gathering spaces and social interactions" and "safety in pedestrian and bicycle traffic" has the most importance and satisfaction, respectively. In the physical-spatial dimension, the item "diversity of uses" has the most importance and the item "round-the-clock activity of the uses" has the highest level of satisfaction. In the economic-welfare dimension, the item "ease of access to public transportation" and the item "psychological comfort" have obtained the most importance and highest level of satisfaction. In order to improve the satisfaction status of each item, implementation strategies have been presented.