Investigating the Impacts of Neighborhood Physical Factors on Increasing Women’ Physical Activities (Mohandesin Neighborhood on Urmia)

The environmental factors of the settlements have an important impact on the physical activities of the residents and reduce the problems caused by the inactivities. Due to the lack of existing researches, designers and planners pay little attention to the factors that promote physical activities in urban areas. This issue is more important for women in different countries with different cultural and social conditions. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the physical factors affecting the level of physical activities among women in Urmia’s Mohandesin Neighborhood. Using library resources, factors affecting the number of days that women engage in physical activities per month were identified and a researcher-made questionnaire was prepared. The content of the questionnaire was checked by 35 people from the statistical population and the reliability of the research was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha (0.961). The questionnaire was randomly distributed among 300 people. The results obtained from the data analysis of SPSS26 using the Poisson regression method showed that the factors “presence of trees and flowers”, “lighting of furniture and communal spaces”, “available sports equipment”, “access to neighborhood park”, “readability of the environment”, “attention to the human scale in designing urban spaces and equipment” and “the color and material of pavements” have significant impacts on the number of days that the women of the neighborhood engage in physical activities each month. Moreover, according to Chi-Duwald's statistic, “presence of trees and flowers” has the greatest impact on the dependent variable. In this way, the available factors with the greatest impact in each neighborhood are identified by the designers.