فصلنامه مطالعات شهری
پیاپی 27 (تابستان 1397)

As key elements of cities, urban areas have always been an important issue in the history of urban studies. People of various social strata may need to visit and/or pass through urban areas with different goals on a regular basis. In this sense, urban spaces can play an important role in forming social interactions and shaping people’s memories. The optimal design of an urban environment as a suitable context for extensive social interactions can help to meet the needs of citizens in an effective way. Urban areas are considered as the core context for social and economic interactions in cities. Insofar as they facilitate the presence and mobility of people, urban areas act as the beating hearts of cities and have an important role in establishing communication among various members of the society. This study aims to investigate the historic textureof Gonbad-e Kavus urban area which is one of the most important public spaces in Gonbad-e Kavus and home to major economic and recreational centers. The main objective of this study is to comprehensively identify the factors that enhance the responsiveness of urban areas as well as the criteria that help to achieve user satisfaction. The main research question addresses the degree of importance of factors that influence the responsiveness of the studied urban area, which is why it is essential to identify them clearly. In addition, improving the responsiveness of urban areas via considering the importance of influencing factors is the idea behind the second research question. The present study is an applied research in terms of its objective and a descriptive-analytical research in terms of its methodology. The process of identifying effective factors was based on a qualitative research strategy conducted through an indirect survey tactic based on expert opinions collected from a community of urban planners, professors and students of architecture. The sample size was determined by Cochran’s sample size formula and the participants were randomly selected via the snowball sampling method. The variables were identified based on theoretical studies through an extensive review of the related literature in order to achieve appropriate executive strategies for enhancing the environmental responsiveness of urban areas. Based on the literature review, a comprehensive set of responsiveness criteria was identified and prioritized by experts, including accessibility, land use diversity, legibility, permeability, richness, concentration or density of land use, visual proportions, flexibility, privatization and structure of organization. Considering the current condition of Gonbad-e Kavus urban area, a comprehensive set of effective strategies was evaluated and proposed for improving the current indices of environmental responsiveness. The results indicate that, among the evaluated strategies, the accessibility, diversity and legibility strategies have the highest levels of priority, in order of importance, for improving the responsiveness of Gonbad-e Kavus urban area. Given its role in facilitating commuting and convenient access to this area, accessibility is identified as the first priority. In addition, the diversity of existing land use patterns for meeting various user needs helps significantly to increase the appeal of this urban area for attracting a larger audience. Finally, the factors of legibility and permeability are also very important in creating a more responsive urban area.

So far, many studies have been carried out on the presence and activity of various age groups in the urban environment, including children, youth and adults. Attention to adolescents as an age group with specific needs has a relatively long history in foreign countries. Its first spells can be attributed to Lynch’s 1977 study. In his study, “Growing Up in Cities”, he studied a small group of adolescents in different cities to discover their use and value to their surroundings, and to understand the importance of urban spaces as vital resources for their growth from adolescence to adulthood. The research inspired further research on adolescents and their local environment. Since the mid-1990s, researchers have shown their interest in more extreme studies on the underlying government policies and strategies that lead to the isolation of adolescents from public spaces through monitoring their movements and neglecting activities such as skateboarding and graffiti. Over the past two decades, the trend of urban planners and designers in adolescent studies has also increased significantly in foreign countries, especially in European ones. On the other hand, it is believed today that dominant approaches and urban laws cause various social, economic, social and sexual discrimination among citizens. On the basis of such discrimination, the majority of public and active spaces of the city are at the disposal of adults while children and adolescents are on the sidelines. In Iran, however, the adolescent group remains largely ignored and most of their needs are not studied as an independent age group. In the present study, therefore, we try to focus on the activity of adolescents – as one of the groups not covered in our urban studies – in their favorite urban spaces. It is because this age group, on one hand, is considered a potentially very important part of the users of urban spaces, and, on the other hand, adolescents require to be present in urban spaces, experience a variety of social roles, and test their abilities in this context in order to grow as a person with a social identity. In line with this, Azadi Street, center of RajaeiShahr district, was selected as the case study, and 250 adolescents from 12 to 19 years old were chosen to be investigated through a questionnaire involving items about their activities and their level of satisfaction with environmental quality of the streets. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (independent t-test and multivariate regression). The analysis indicates that 11% and 74% of the teens go to the streets on a daily and weekly basis, respectively, often in the evening, along with their friends for window shopping, sitting at the parks, and watching other people. The highest to the lowest satisfaction level of adolescents with the components of environmental qualities of the street is related to security, accessibility, attractiveness, convenience, and comfort. With the exception of attractiveness, significant differences were found between boys and girls in terms of their satisfaction with the quality of environmental components. The results of the regression model also showed that 43% of boys’ and 75% of girls’ activity can be predicted by the components of environmental quality. Attractiveness and comfort are more important for boys and attractiveness, safety, convenience and comfort are considerably important and effective for girls.

The public spaces of city shape social flows, provide the material needs of citizens, their intrinsic need for communication and face-to-face social interactions. Therefore, the quality of urban spaces in the formation of social interactions, the mental image of the city and its visualization are important. Several factors play a role in the formulation of the concept of quality, the most important of which is the configuration of urban spaces. The spatial configuration organizes the relationships between urban spaces. It is a factor in shaping qualitative variables such as readability and accessibility. Parks are one of the urban spaces whose social performance and productivity are directly affected by spatial quality. However, urban parks are now the epicenter of most social anomalies due to different factors and, as public spaces, are less able to provide a suitable environment for the formation of social interactions. In recent decades, the theory of space layout has made it possible to analyze the spatial configuration and its relationship with social, economic and physical factors using spatial variables. The present study investigates the structure and analyzes the features of spatial configuration of Mashhad in order to examine its effects on the spatial quality of urban parks. Configuration analysis provides an appropriate assessment of the spatial distribution, accessibility, security and readability of urban parks and can play an important role in redefining the quality of urban parks spatially. Since parks play an important role in urban spaces, evaluation of the layout, spatial distribution and access to urban parks in Mashhad are among the most important goals of the study. In addition, the readability and security of Mashhad parks are other parameters that are studied in this study using the space-layout theory variables. The present research is an applied research with a descriptive-analytical method. The statistical sample involves 290 parks in Mashhad in the five categories of neighborhood, local, district, region, and city. The research was conducted using spatial variables of space layout. The theoretical framework of the research was developed based on documentary and library studies with the aim of explaining the dimensions of spatial quality. Also, the city’s statistics in 2014, land use maps of 2011 (1/200 scale), satellite images and field surveys were used to analyze the data and collect information about the urban parks in Mashhad. The analyses were conducted in the GIS environment and 10 UCL Depthmap based on Mashhad’s axial map. The basic variables in this study were connectivity, interconnection, and control. The intermediate variables were readability, accessibility, space security, and cohesion. Research results show that despite the large dispersion of parks in the city, there is a spatial logic between the performance of parks and the city’s configuration. While regional parks are expected to be more readable in the structure and configuration of the city of Mashhad than district parks, the analyses show that they are less visible and accessible than other parks. The spatial distribution of these parks and their placement in spaces with a greater depth has decreased their spatial quality. Thus, one cannot expect significant functional and social effectiveness from this category of parks. In terms of spatial quality, urban parks are perhaps the only form of urban and social spaces that have the greatest impact on the spatial configuration of city due to their type of performance. The results of this study show that the distribution of urban parks in Mashhad is less spatially hierarchical. Although the main parks are distributed on a city scale in accordance with the axes of association and readability, most regional and district parks do not have such a distribution. This feature also affects the spatial cohesion of urban parks in relation to the structure of Mashhad and reduces the quality of space. Finally, it can be of said that, regardless of the spatial cohesion of Mashhad, which has a weak correlation with the components of the urban space and the city as whole, all the research indicators related to the quality of parks in Mashhad are poor and weak. This necessitates the attention to the park’s functional scale in the planning process, the proper location of urban parks, and the proper design according to the urban spatial pattern. Also, an assessment of the category of parks found that despite the number of neighborhood and local parks, these types of parks are better in terms of control than other parks, which seem to be logical according to the functional radius on a local scale. However, urban parks are of great importance in terms of accessibility and readability in the current structure of Mashhad. It seems that the assessment of spatial quality and its relationship with function can have an effective role in the planning and design of urban parks.

Satisfaction with the residential environment is an important factor for attaining life satisfaction. One of the most important measures of the Iranian state is the provision of housing for low and middle income classes in cities through the Mehr Housing Project. It seems that the policy behind this project paid particular attention to quantitative aspects of housing rather than its social and economic characteristics. The Mehr Housing Project is the biggest national housing plan which needs to be studied in terms of its outcomes due to its broad and new character in Iran. The present research aims to investigate and compare the satisfaction level of the residents of the state-initiated andself-owned Mehr houses in Amol.

 The research methodology was based on descriptive and analytical approaches and the required data was collected via field survey and secondary documents. The number of samples was determined using Cochran formula to be 253. Due to data abnormality, nonparametric tests were applied to analyze the residents’ satisfaction. Also, the binomial test was used to investigate and identify the satisfaction level with both state-initiated and self-owned Mehr houses. The Mann-Whitney U test was applied to compare the satisfaction level between state-initiated and self-owned Mehr housing project. Finally, Friedman’s test was used to rank the satisfaction level of residents. Amol state Mehr housing, with 546 households, is located in Hezarsangar Avenue, Amol, Iran.These complexes were constructed by 4 different cooperative companies. In addition, there are 3 other self-owned Mehr housing complexes, includeing the Paniz complex with 64 units and Pahlevanzadeh complex with 64 units, both located on the Taaleb-e Amoli avenue, and Royal-Roz complex with 182 units located on the Mirzahashem-e Amoli boulevard. The socio-economic condition, landscape and access in the self-owned Mehr housing is better than that in the state Mehr hosing.Cochran’s method was used to determine the sample size. Eventually, 253 households(153 households from the state Mehr hosing and 100 households from self-owned Mehr housing)were interviewed. Due to data abnormality, nonparametric tests were used to analyze the residents’ satisfaction. The applied methods include the binomial, Mann-Whitney and Friedman tests.

In this article, we tried to evaluate the objective and subjective factors that affect residents’ satisfaction with the state and self-owned Mehr hosing. The results show that the satisfaction level is low in all the housing components, the minimum satisfaction level being associated with the facilities, visibility and landscape. In Mehrself-owned housing, a dissatisfaction is observed with the components of facilities, visibility and landscape. As for the other components, given that the significance level was 0.05, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction level with any of the components was not significant. However, the degree of satisfaction with Mehr self-owned housing is relatively higher than that of the state.According to the results, Mehr housing complexes do not meet the expectations of residents. It can thus be argued that certain quantitative aspects along with the apperance of the houses have been prioritized in planning the construction and implementation of the Mehr housing project. The results are consistent with previous research results for mostcomponents. As a result, neglecting the quality, needs and satisfaction of residents has led to dissatisfaction with Mehr housing project. Therefore, managers and planners need to review the objectives and receive feedback from residents.
 

 
In providing housing for low-income groups, quality improvement, particularly in the area of the quality of physical space, the provision of educational, health and commercial services, the provision of sports equipment, playgrounds and greenery, the reinforcement of public transport and landscaping are necessary and effective on the satisfaction of residents. It is thus suggested to develop some strategies to achieve the above objectives for the Mehr housing complexes in Amol.
The culture-led urban regeneration and cultural tourism are two sides of a coin in the renovation of valuable urban areas. The first is a comprehensive process for saving the deteriorated urban areas of the city from the destruction of physic and activity, and the latter is the most effective way of promoting people’s participation, culture and art and mobilizing social and cultural forces for old urban areas.  Culture-led urban regeneration is one of the most recent approaches to sustainable urban regeneration, which, after many years of experience, has proved its legitimacy not only as a theoretical approach, but also as a practical strategy for the modernization and improvement of the old neighborhoods. The contribution of the cultural and human heritage of valuable neighbors to the process of regeneration can be realized because the local economy and related businesses would be supported through tourism development and tourists’ interest in such neighborhoods. Therefore, the culture-led urban regeneration through tourism development can be considered as one of the most promising solutions for the sustainable regeneration of old towns.When tourism is considered as way of rehabilitation of the underlying culture, culture-based tourism is clearly intended. Cultural tourism is defined as a type of tourism whose main purpose is to spread the horizons of knowledge through the discovery of artistic heritage or architecture of a land. This article investigates the interaction of the two in the framework of strategic planning of cultural tourism development in the old fabric of Rasht, which covers the Zahedan and Sagharisazan neighborhoods. The research method is descriptive-analytic, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools, including a questionnaire, for data collection. The internal and external factors are evaluated through a panel of 30 local experts, including experts from the Municipality and Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department. The sampling method was snowball sampling due to the uncertainty of the population.The results show that, despite having its own cultural resources, the old fabric of Rasht has not been able to use local resources due to the weakness of the cultural tourism infrastructure and the lack of creativity in the use of art and culture in the process of culture-led urban regeneration.Prioritized strategies, executive policies and action plans were developed for mobilizing cultural and artistic sources in developing cultural tourism while actively protecting cultural heritage and identity simultaneously. Creating new and different tourist attractions through reviving ritual traditions, improving historic buildings by planning attractive activities for tourists and pedestrinization of Bazar-Khahar-e- Imam –Zarjub are among the most prioritized strategies designed for cultural-led urban regeneration through urban tourism in the old fabric of Rasht. Besides, the results of this article show that the plan for tourism development in the Iranian historical neighborhoods should be a long-term plan that prioritizes the provision of infrastructure and changes in short-term views towards urban management

The culture-led urban regeneration and cultural tourism are two sides of a coin in the renovation of valuable urban areas. The first is a comprehensive process for saving the deteriorated urban areas of the city from the destruction of physic and activity, and the latter is the most effective way of promoting people’s participation, culture and art and mobilizing social and cultural forces for old urban areas. Culture-led urban regeneration is one of the most recent approaches to sustainable urban regeneration, which, after many years of experience, has proved its legitimacy not only as a theoretical approach, but also as a practical strategy for the modernization and improvement of the old neighborhoods. The contribution of the cultural and human heritage of valuable neighbors to the process of regeneration can be realized because the local economy and related businesses would be supported through tourism development and tourists’ interest in such neighborhoods. Therefore, the culture-led urban regeneration through tourism development can be considered as one of the most promising solutions for the sustainable regeneration of old towns. When tourism is considered as way of rehabilitation of the underlying culture, culture-based tourism is clearly intended. Cultural tourism is defined as a type of tourism whose main purpose is to spread the horizons of knowledge through the discovery of artistic heritage or architecture of a land. This article investigates the interaction of the two in the framework of strategic planning of cultural tourism development in the old fabric of Rasht, which covers the Zahedan and Sagharisazan neighborhoods. The research method is descriptive-analytic, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative tools, including a questionnaire, for data collection. The internal and external factors are evaluated through a panel of 30 local experts, including experts from the Municipality and Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department. The sampling method was snowball sampling due to the uncertainty of the population. The results show that, despite having its own cultural resources, the old fabric of Rasht has not been able to use local resources due to the weakness of the cultural tourism infrastructure and the lack of creativity in the use of art and culture in the process of culture-led urban regeneration. Prioritized strategies, executive policies and action plans were developed for mobilizing cultural and artistic sources in developing cultural tourism while actively protecting cultural heritage and identity simultaneously. Creating new and different tourist attractions through reviving ritual traditions, improving historic buildings by planning attractive activities for tourists and pedestrinization of Bazar-Khahar-e- Imam –Zarjub are among the most prioritized strategies designed for cultural-led urban regeneration through urban tourism in the old fabric of Rasht. Besides, the results of this article show that the plan for tourism development in the Iranian historical neighborhoods should be a long-term plan that prioritizes the provision of infrastructure and changes in short-term views towards urban management.

National population aging is one of the issues that has been taken into consideration in recent years. In this regard, the United Nations also called 1999 the International Year of Older Persons (IYOP). The population aging rate is now higher in the developed countries, but this does not mean that the developing countries do not face this issue. Because of the change in the population pattern in the coming years, there is a potential for population aging in developing countries such as Iran. Despite being one of the very young countries in the world with more than 50% of its population being under twenty years old, Iran will experience a transition phase in the age structure of the population from youth to aged people due to the current population control policies, the promotion of nutrition and health quality and an increase in the life expectancy. In this regard, the head of the Welfare Organization considers the issues regarding the elderly to be very critical and believes that “If you are not already thinking about these issues and the costs involved, in the years to come, even the entire country’s budget will not be enough for the elderly.” Ignoring the situation of the elderly in urban planning is a shortcoming. Therefore, it is imperative that national laws and regulations be established for this purpose. The research method is descriptive-analytical with an applied purpose. In the present research, documentary studies were used to select the indices and theoretical bases. The selected indicators are derived from Zarghani’s study (2015), which is in accordance with WHO criteria. In this research, four major social (10 items), cultural and recreational (10 items), health (7 items) and communication indices (8 items) in the city of Bokan were examined using the Likert scale (complete disagreement to full agreement). The study population consisted of 100 citizens over 40 years of age in Bokan. A 35-item questionnaire was distributed among 154 people over 40 years of age in Bokan, and 100 questionnaires were collected and analyzed. Data was analyzed in SPSS. T-test was used to compare the mean values. Findings show that the average value of all the considered criteria (social, communicative, cultural-recreational and health-care) is lower than the standard. That is, they do not even meet the basic needs of the elderly, which is indicative of a great failure in the related services. Also, the research findings indicate that the status of some of the studied indicators is worse, such as lack of job opportunities for the elderly, lack of suitable space for communication with educational centers (e.g. computers, the Internet, etc.), absence of signs for facilities and services in the elderlies’ homes, the impossibility of free membership of the elderly in all governmental and nongovernmental libraries, absence of shopping malls for the purchase of the elderly, lack of proper physical design of the buildings of physicians, clinics, offices, etc. for the use of the elderly and non-provision of the necessary education to families in the field of self-care and the elderly. The older people in Bokan are mostly disappointed with the above indices. Therefore, future planning must prioritize the welfare of the elderly.

Residential constructions with or even without plan have led to the expansion of cities and their peripheral areas into the agricultural lands of central city-region of Mazandaran province. The economic capacity of this region is based on the capacity of agricultural development. To preserve the national capital, a specific plan should be adopted to prevent the increasing destruction of the lands and the development of the buildings constructed on these lands. The current capacity has already been completely forgotten and undergone changes or even widespread degradation due to the development of the land and housing market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the typology of spatial patterns of sprawl in central city-region of Mazandaran province. The research method is quantitative and the main data is summarized in terms of demographic and physical-spatial components to achieve the research objectives. The annual data on the population of rural and urban areas in the Statistical Yearbooks of Mazandaran Province from 1986 to 2016 was consulted to obtain demographic data. Physical-spatial data includes the data related to built-up lands during 1986-2016 (based on Landsat images and 1:25000 map of Mazandaran province development) and construction density in the study period. Other data was obtained from statistical and mathematical processing of demographic and physical-spatial data using GIS, ESRI, and the urban growth model. Then, the Kriging Estimator was used for the typology of macro-scale spatial models. Also, the urban growth form (UGF) was used for micro-scale spatial patterns. This model can identify 3 main types of sprawl, including linear, infill and leap-frog patterns, based on the development process perspective. The results of the research indicate that urban sprawl has increased on the macro scale during the studied period. In this sense, the spatial pattern in 1986 was focused on only three main urban centers with a sprawl in their peripheral lands, especially in the city of Sari. However, in 1996, due to the transformation of some rural centers into urban areas and the trend of development in the lands around urban centers, concentration in Babol increased, but only some parts of the lands of Babol and Qaemshahr underwent the sprawl phenomenon. This was the case up to 2006, but in 2016, along with the concentration of development in urban, peri-urban and rural lands, the sprawl phenomenon intensified with increasing values of the related variables. On the other hand, spatial patterns of sprawl from 1986 to 1996 (including intervals of 1986-1996 and 1996-2006) were linear on a micro scale, a line with an upward trend due to the development around the boundaries of urban settlements (peri-urban lands). However, in the period from 1986 to 1996, sprawled development tended to have an infill pattern, indicating the emergence of a combination of linear and infill patterns. In the period from 2006 to 2016, the spatial pattern of growth was also an infilled one. It should be noted that, in a separate study of urban and rural settlements of the studied city-region, different results were observed in urban lands. Thus, it can be concluded that the sprawl pattern in urban lands often follows a dispersed and linear pattern, while rural settlements have a linear and infill pattern. The sprawl pattern in the central city-region of Mazandaran has evolved as a result of the development of rural lands. Residential constructions with or even without plan have led to the expansion of cities and their peripheral areas into the agricultural lands of central city-region of Mazandaran province. The economic capacity of this region is based on the capacity of agricultural development. To preserve the national capital, a specific plan should be adopted to prevent the increasing destruction of the lands and the development of the buildings constructed on these lands. The current capacity has already been completely forgotten and undergone changes or even widespread degradation due to the development of the land and housing market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the typology of spatial patterns of sprawl in central city-region of Mazandaran province. The research method is quantitative and the main data is summarized in terms of demographic and physical-spatial components to achieve the research objectives. 

Geographical location and seismic records of many Iranian cities, including Tehran, draw attention to the vulnerability to earthquake hazards in various fields and specialties. Due to its nature, urban planning examines this issue in the urban fabrics. In line with this, the present study investigates the texts and documents related to the earthquake and the role of urban planning in reducing its effects in terms of safety issues of settlements as well as crisis management. The residential fabric planning and its dimensions and features (including land use, plotting, texture formation, density, communication network, open space, service centers), as interfaces between the residential fabric and vulnerability, and thus the linkage between crisis management in these contexts and urban planning provides an operational model for earthquake vulnerability assessment of the residential areas in the 6th District of Tehran. This model is based on two important issues related to earthquake: the destruction rate and the number of human casualties, divided accordingly into two categories of factors and sub-factors. Based on this model, indicators were determined to study the vulnerability level. The physical resistance index of the fabric was extracted from the first category of the model sub-factors and the post-crisis fabric accountability index was extracted from the second one. Based on these 15 indicators, the vulnerability of the 6th District of Tehran was investigated separately for the residential neighborhoods. The vulnerability of residential neighborhoods was evaluated based on the values of evaluation factors extracted using the AHP method. Finally, the goals, strategies and policies needed to reduce the vulnerability according to the coefficient of significance were obtained separately for 7 neighborhoods using the same method. Based on the results, the following measures can be effective in promoting the safety of neighborhoods in the 6th district against earthquakes: setting objectives for increasing the physical strength of the fabric in order to reduce the destruction rate and increase the fabric efficiency in post-crisis response and relief efforts to reduce human mortality, and adopting strategies for increasing resistance in residential buildings and to strengthen the role and efficiency of open spaces, creating and strengthening an effective access network appropriate for the population, and controlling and guiding demographic indicators. In general, the proposed solutions are developed in five categories: the general form of residential fabric (segmentation, distribution, neighborhood...), green spaces and public open spaces, access networks, population density, and construction monitoring and supervision. Finally, the spatial priority of the implementation of proposed policies for neighborhoods, as well as the priority of policy implementation in each neighborhood is determined to look at the developed goals and strategies more efficiently.