Urban Dyslexia; A New Concept in the Perception and Legibility of the City

"Urban Dyslexia" is a new concept to return to the human mind in the process of designing the city. This concept, as a mental phenomenon, is mainly semantic-social in nature and is manifested in the behavioral patterns of citizens. Urban Dyslexia is a kind of perceptual-behavioral disorder of citizens in interaction with the environment; criteria such as poverty, education, social capital, value changes, sociability, legalism, belonging, indifference, environmental intelligence, alienation, etc., along with the physical and semiotic components of the city, determine the degree of Urban Dyslexia. The most important function of this concept is the awareness of urban experts about the mentality of citizens and is useful in providing action plans for the city. The main objective of this research is to introduce urban dyslexia as a new concept, in the process of exploring the causes of people's disregard for the messages that the city provides as instructions. Many cases of behavioral disorders among citizens have psychosocial roots and do not arise solely from the physical or functional deficiencies of the city. The research method is Sequential-Explanatory Mixed Method. Combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has occurred in the interpretation stage; the research was conducted on a selected sample of residents of Tehran. The research approach is based on social psychology and examines the behavior of citizens by focusing on the theoretical-conceptual framework of the research. Today, in the era of the information revolution, the city has become a vague phenomenon where the relationship of the city's inhabitants does not follow the old rules. The current order that governs cities is derived from the philosophical, cultural and scientific foundations that have developed over the centuries and have confronted cities with a wide variety of equipment, functions, uses, spaces, etc. It is not possible to run such a city with unsystematic and simplistic approaches, and it will be difficult to live in it without a proper understanding of its nature. Many studies by urban planners on creating legibility in urban contexts have not been fruitful; simultaneously with the increase of visual and mental stimuli in urban environments, the importance of legibility as a quality in urban space has increased. There are so many cities that, despite careful design and planning, are still not considered legible by the citizens, and people show that they have not properly understood the concepts of the city by their behavior in the city. This study has explored the causes of illegibility in the city not necessarily in the physical environment, but in the minds and perceptions of citizens; the result of this study is the introduction of a new concept called "urban dyslexia" through which some mental areas of communication disorders between humans and the environment can be identified. The most important function of this concept for urban professionals is to become aware of the mentality and gain a deeper understanding of space users; this concept facilitates the recognition of the audience of decisions and actions in the city and can lead to the optimization of operational solutions.