Determining the Spatial Organization of the Neighborhood based on Providing Territorial Behavior using Space Syntax

Home is the first pillar of social life and the most important space of human life, which by defining the territory and its relationship with other spaces, achieves a balanced interaction with this primary territory. The increased urban density following the changes in the contemporary lifestyle has led to the weakening of the home-based-spaces, which provided a just passing through spaces due to the disruption of the territorial behavior in the lack of residents' surveillance. The purpose of this research is to reduce the gap between theory and practice, by presenting the theoretical framework and testing the physical features using space syntax, answering the question of what spatial structure and physical features based on configuration imply territorial behavior. The research’s hidden assumption is that by creating spatial hierarchies in secondary territories and dividing them into three spatial domains, plus paying attention to the effects of physical configuration characteristics and the access structure between domains, it is possible to achieve interactive secondary territories with transparent shared ownership that can be defended. The research methodology is to explain the design framework in a qualitative and naturalistic way, and from a practical point of view the controlled tests of the design results using the space syntax and the comparative analogous of the mean depth in the UCL Depthmap software to analyze the effective physical features. The results show that firstly, the creation of spatial hierarchy in secondary territories leads to the strengthening of territorial behavior in the home-based-spaces, secondly, the arrangement and physical characteristics of these central open spaces, such as form of domains, access length and width, and it’s number, movement barriers And corners are effective in determining the privacy of territories. Also, these cases, along with visibility, natural surveillance, and people presence requiring activity support, are targeted suggestions for future researches.