A Comparative Analysis of User-Behavior Environmental Characteristics and Space Syntax Components in a Residential Neighborhood with an Organic Context:Chizar

The gap between the findings of environment-behavior studies and the actual design is a fact being observed by many professionalsnowadays. This research is an attempt to bring them closer to application by establishing a relationship between the qualitative features of the environment and the quantitative components of design. The case study is the organic context of Chizar neighborhood in Tehran. The typical qualitative methods of data collection in behavior sciences (observation and questionnaires) and the quantitative, software-assisted method of space syntax were used. Since the software analysis was done based on the location of houses, the result shows the existence of a relationship between residents’ behavior and their evaluation of the environmental characteristics of the neighborhood and the location-based syntactic components of their houses. Based on this survey, the neighborhood has extensive social interactions, active behavioral settings, and adequateenvironmental affordances. The correlation table between the components of space syntax as a variable group and the results of the questionnaire as another group including social interactions, behavioral settings, and environmental affordancespresents the main result of this study. This table shows that the results of the survey are strongly correlated with global integration, local integration, global mean depth, local total depth, connectivity, global choice, local choice, and local RA. These components can be used effectively in the study and design phasesof other similar neighborhoods or be used in the evaluation of pre-designs. The research also yields more results due to its holistic and exploratory nature. Some of the results that are inconsistent with those of previous studies, such as the negative correlation between integration and walking and the positive correlation of mean depth with walking and safetyhighlight the need for additionalresearch.