فصلنامه مطالعات شهری
پیاپی 47 (تابستان 1402)

The effects of emotions on all of man’s daily decisions are undeniable. Using, residing in, and leaving an urban space pertain to the users’ emotions. Therefore, it is important to measure and evaluate the users’ emotions in urban spaces. The purpose of this research is to identify the factors affecting emotions in urban spaces and prioritize them in the selected space.

Theoretical Framework:

In the first step, the literature was reviewed, and a conceptual model for measuring emotional response was then presented. Based on this model, emotions can be measured in three layers: physiological, perceptual, and behavioral. The users’ affective response in the urban space can be investigated on that basis. This case study addresses a sequence of Emamat Street in the city of Mashhad, Iran.

The research was conducted based on a hybrid method. A biometric sensor (Empatica-E4) was used to collect data at the physiological level. Cognitive data were collected through walking interviews and videos. In addition, the speed of walking in the behavioral layer was measured. The resulting data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, and the factors affecting the emotional response in this street were finally identified. The factors identified as a result of the analysis made in the above three layers were adapted to each other. Based on the exploratory analysis made through the SPSS software, the factors affecting the emotional response were prioritized. Twenty people participated in this survey and shared their emotional responses in the selected sequence of Emamat Street, which is one kilometer long.

The results demonstrated that the users’ emotional response was pleasant. According to the results of the data in the biological layer, it was found that the part with a dominant natural character conveys more peace. Moreover, the monotonous sections, the inactive environments of the street, and the part with heavy traffic cause unpleasant emotional responses. The analysis of perceptual data indicated that the presence of greenery and retails exhibits a greater effect on pleasant feelings. The analysis of movement speed shows that in environments involving attractiveness, there is a diverse, relaxed decrease in the speed of movement over the space and the desire to stay. Based on the results, it was found that factors such as greenery, traffic, land use and activity, behavioral patterns, crowd, and noise pollution have effects on the emotional response. In order to prioritize the factors affecting the emotional response in the above space, the data were analyzed in the physiological and cognitive layers in SPSS. The results were rather the same. It can also be concluded that among the factors affecting the emotional response, non-physical ones, such as natural elements, crowd, noise pollution, and land use and activity, have greater influences than physical factors like the type of flooring and facade. Among these, the greatest effects on the desired emotional response are exhibited by the type of activity including exercise, the presence of a group of elderly people, and the existing nature, including tall trees on the edge of the park, visible vegetation, and plants and decorative flowers present over the space. 

This study was designed to identify the factors influencing the affective and behavioral response in urban spaces. We first explained the conceptual framework of the research by reviewing the literature on studies conducted in this area and examining the theories related to the emotional response in urban spaces, factors affecting emotions within the city, and methods of measuring the affective and behavioral response in the city. The research methodology was developed along with a practical test for assessing the affective and behavioral response and the experiment path given the available tools and methods used in previous projects and studies.The results obtained from the analysis of the recorded data on the heart rates of the participants in the experiment, the speeds of their movement in each sequence, and their cognitive responses revealed that factors such as vegetation, vehicular traffic, land use and activity, behavioral patterns, crowdedness, and noise pollution are effective on the affective response, and, thereby, affect people’s senses. This research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic; thus, the constraints ruling over urban spaces made it more difficult to perform the experiment with more participants. Obviously, conducting the experiment with a larger number of participants can bring about more reliable results. The reason for using a homogeneous age and social group was to decrease the probability of recording data outside the standard range. Naturally, doing research with a larger sample size would allow use of more diverse age groups. Based on the above findings, some suggestions are made for designing the space based on emotions, as follows.The vegetation and greenery space has a significant impact in the creation of a feeling of peace. The variety in the color and type of vegetation may also increase the pleasant feeling. However, if the vegetation reduces visibility, it would be effective in the creation of an unpleasant feeling.Water in the urban space beings about a feeling of naturalness and tranquility in users. However, in a space filled with crowd and noise pollution, the sound of water can increase noise pollution. The ground floor in urban spaces obviously affects the pedestrians’ perception more than other floors. Thus, the transparency of the wall, its beauty, variety, and coherence have prominent impacts in the creation of pleasant emotions. It is better to avoid building long, rigid, inactive walls. If there are such spaces, the ground for creating activity at certain intervals should be provided. The street-crossing areas should be designed in parts of the route with sufficient visibility for drivers and pedestrians; moreover, the pedestrian lanes need to be clear. When there is a potential for overcrowding, the movement and activity interference should be minimized to reduce the resulting crowdedness and arousal.The context for the emergence of desirable behavioral patterns such as exercise in the park should be provided in all directions, and a certain space for undesirable behaviors should be predicted as well.

Today, the study of a residential environment is important because of its effectiveness on important planning indicators such as residential relocation rate, quality of life, and housing demand forecasting, and the quality of the environment is a factor affecting urban population movements. Residential stability leads to community cohesion, the formation of social networks, and informal social monitoring, which collectively lead to the solution of community and neighborhood problems. The purpose of this research is to discover the factors affecting residential instability and the desire to move, especially with respect to the quality of the environment of residential buildings in the city of Arak, Iran.

 Theoretical Framework:

From the early 1950s, the big cities of Iran were exposed to massive migration. The immediate solution to this crisis was to build residential buildings in sparsely populated areas. The point that can be seen in the process of creating residential buildings in Iran is that they have often neglected the principles and criteria of urban planning in the planning and design of residential buildings and have failed to create desirable residential environments. They have also ignored the residents in the design of the buildings, decreasing their level of satisfaction.Moreover, the quality of the environment is considered as a factor affecting population movements within the city and attempts to leave the neighborhoods. The residents’ assessment of their residential environment is effective on the size of population attracted to and retained in the urban area, and it is an important factor influential on population mobility within the city.Studies have demonstrated in regard to the differences between planned and actual residential moves that 48 percent of those who have intended to move have left their homes after 5 years, while 14% of those who have planned to stay have also moved. Reducing residential mobility is a step towards building a stable neighborhood.

The method of information analysis adopted in this research is based on the systematic approach of Strauss’ and Corbin’s theories in the three main steps of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding, which is based on continuous comparison.Open coding is based on general questions aimed at discovering the truth, such as why you stayed in this building, why you intend to go, and what factors make you stay or leave. Axial coding is aimed to establish a relationship between the concepts generated in the open coding step. The basis of the communication process in axial coding is to focus on and define a category as the central one and then place other categories as sub-categories below the main one.In selective coding, the utilized categories are theoretically saturated.The first and second steps are logically placed next to each other based on the coded concepts. Then, the researcher must choose the core category. Here, the major categories are related to each other in the form of a paradigm model (contextual model) around the core category.

The findings indicate that 23.5% of the residents tended to stay in their current homes for one to four years, while the estimated lengths of stay in their current homes included five to eight years for 17.8%, six to twelve years for 10.0%, and above sixteen years for 2.8%. The greatest impact on residential stability concerning the subject of the research is exhibited by causal conditions (such as the design and construction of a building), which are formed before its construction, and conditions other than the background ones (such as the location of the building in the city), taking shape after its construction, which include intervening and strategic conditions. Strategic conditions are exemplified by feelings of security and tranquility, congestion, and management, and intervening conditions include neighborhood relations, residents’ cultural level and social homogeneity, lack of economic capacity to move, and lack of buyers. The reasons for the poor conditions of the building (which are more personal and individual and are different for each person) include factors affecting residential stability and the desire to move.

Good building quality and cultural level and homogeneity were the first and second priorities of the residents to achieve residential stability. However, the respondents’ important reasons include the high level of reference to peace and security, high access level, proper management, and economic inability to move. Other items mentioned include proper location of the apartment and the building. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the factors that create residential stability are different from those that create the desire and tendency to move. The factors creating residential stability are stated based on facts and needs, but those for tendency to move are stated based on wishes, ideals, and expectations. Furthermore, the greater the distance between these two (real requests and wishes), the greater the desire to move.

In recent decades, humanity has moved towards the vertical expansion of cities with the help of significant advances in technology and the construction industry and for various reasons such as population growth, scarcity, high cost of land, and profitability. This issue is expanding into most countries and is not specific to advanced, rich industrialized ones. The expansion takes place at a higher rate in developed countries and at a lower rate in developing countries. The experience of examining these buildings demonstrates that besides their benefits, they create many problems for their residents and citizens who encounter them on urban roads, which has caused people’s dissatisfaction to some extent. The country of Iran is not exempt fromthisissue and has experienced these high-rise constructions (although at a lower rate) for several decades. However, the regulations concerning high-rise buildings in Iran have not yet been fully compiled in all aspects of these buildings, and there are shortcomings in this field that need to be reviewed and evaluated by experts.

Theoretical Framework:

The increase in the number of tall buildings that are built in various forms in the narrow streets of cities raises the need to pay attention to these buildings. These various buildings impose many effects on the city and citizens by being established in different urban areas. The current research is based on an aspect of the perceptual and psychological effects of these buildings under the title of oppression (psychological effects) on the city and citizens, which is usually less noticed by architectural and urban planning experts in cities. This subtle, significant effect of tall buildings is felt by citizens as they walk in the city streets and see the buildings, and in the long run, living in such places can create and stimulate many psychological problems for people and endanger their mental health. The present study is aimed at this important practical issue in the field of psychology of urban environments (along with tall buildings).In fact, the present study investigates the effect of configuration-related parameters and the tall building landscape on the perceptual and psychological components by focusing on the citizens’ feeling of oppression that is created by the tall buildings in the urban landscape on a daily basis.

The present survey discussed the impacts of the variables concerning the appearance and visible view of tall buildings in the case study on psychological variables after extracting the psychological variables affected thereby with the library-document research method.

The results reported in this section demonstrated that with an increase in the solid angle of the building, the participants who encounter these buildings undergo more suppression, and satisfaction with the oppression decreases. In order to discover the underlying properties of perceptual variables, exploratory factor analysis was used, and the results indicated that the sixteen perceptual variables could be grouped into four categories in terms of quality: pleasant, depressing, green, and remarkable. Moreover, the effect of the solid angle of the building on the depression rate in the landscape demonstrated that the landscape becomes unpleasant and depressing as the solid angle of the building increases, but the effect of trees and vegetation on this environmental quality requires further research.The rest of the study is dedicated to a comparison of the oppression of the Zagros tower (the subject of the case study) on the participants who face the tower from different streets (to the relevant international standard).The results reported in this section also demonstrated (according to the mean statistics) that the pictures taken from Beynolnahreyn Street exhibit the lowest level of oppression and the highest level of satisfaction, from the participants’ point of view. Conversely, the pictures taken between Aref and Taleghani, on Jahannama, and between Mirzadeh Eshghi and Jahannama were perceived with the highest degree of oppression and dissatisfaction. Therefore, it seems that from the perspective of the above streets, the impact of the tower on participants’ perceived psychological pressure (oppression) has received less attention.

This method can be used as a practical tool by urban decision-makers to locate tall buildings (with the aim of psychological sustainability of the urban landscape) if further studies are carried out.

The weakening nature of the place is one of the most important challenges facing contemporary cities. The contemporary citizen faces spaces without meaning and identity that have not yet turned into places. This is more important in new urban settlements, due to the lack of historical, identity, and existence backgrounds. The subject of this case study, the Qods district, located in the city of Qom, Iran, which suffers from disturbances in various aspects, is an example of new urban developments that require attention. The purpose of this research is to measure and analyze the importance of the components of the sense of place in the Qods district, to answer the following questions: What are the indicators of achieving a sense of place in the Qods district as a new urban development? How can one evaluate the effects of each component of the sense of place on the Qods settlement residents?

Theoretical Framework:

The term sense of place denotes people’s attachment and relation to the place, or the structure of feeling, as some have put it (Agnew, 1987, cited in Arefi, 1999: 180). Experts have held relatively similar viewpoints regarding the components of the sense of place and its indicators. In large part, most of these opinions have confirmed the physical environment, activity, and perception as the three main components. According to Shamai (1991), the sense of place consists of three phases. The first phase concerns belonging to a place, the middle phase is attachment to a place, and the final phase is commitment to a place (Shamai, 1991: 349). Hummon (1992) describes five levels of the sense of place, or place attachment, as follows: uncommitted placelessness, relativity, place alienation, divided rootedness, and cohesive rootedness (Cross, 2001: 10). As a result of the interdisciplinary nature of the concept of sense of place, numerous experts and schools of thought have offered various perspectives that can be said to have a lot of similarities and few differences. Different experts such as sociologists, geographers, environmental psychologists, anthropologists, architects, and urban planners have addressed the concept of sense of place in different ways in their studies. Among the numerous kinds of research conducted in different countries in the past half-century, most of the academic studies have been focused on conceptual analysis and formulation of theoretical models on the one hand and on evaluation of this category in different scales on the other.

This research was conducted through a mixed paradigm and a descriptive-analytical method. The data collection tools were library-documentary studies, and the population included 245 residents of the Qods district. The data analysis tools involved two descriptive and inferential analyzes using the statistical methods of Structural Equation Modeling and Pearson correlation test, implemented in the SPSS 23 and Amos Graphics 26 software. The conceptual model of this research consisted of 3 main components, i.e. form, activity, and perception, 12 indicators, and 45 sub-indices.

The results obtained from the second-order factor analysis model in this research indicate which of the components affecting the sense of place in the residents of the Qods district has a greater weight and effect in the induction of this concept to the residents. Based on the research findings, among the 3 identified components, 12 indicators, and 45 relevant sub-indicators, the functional-activity, perceptual-semantic, and physical-visual components, in that order, exhibit greater weights in the evaluation of the sense of place from the perspective of the Qods district inhabitants. Among the variables observed in the assumed model of this research, the factors of invitation, social participation, motivation, land use, and activity have greater weights in the specification of the residents’ sense of place. Moreover, the correlation between the conceptual components of the research indicates that there is a significant relationship between the three components of the sense of place in the residents of the Qods district. Furthermore, the measurement of the fitness of the conceptual model of the research, according to the indicators of structural equations, demonstrates that the model is desirable.

The following can be stated in response to the first research question as the indicators of achieving a sense of place in the Qods district as a new urban development: indicators of identity and authenticity, motivation, and mental image (in the perceptual-semantic component), indicators of land use and activity, accessibility, urban furniture, invitation, social participation, and safety-security (in the functional-activity component), and indicators of visual coherence, construction form, and visual richness (in the physical-visual component). In response to the second research question, the greater importance and weight of the functional-activity component than the perceptual and visual components indicates that if urban management pays more attention to the residents’ functional and social needs, the indicators of this component, as the most important factor in the induction of a sense of place, will have a greater impact. Moreover, the inferential analysis of the structural equation modeling in the evaluation of the indicators confirms that many indicators have received less attention in the Qods district, while these indicators can be effective on the residents’ continuity and satisfaction, their sense of attachment to the place of residence, and fulfillment of their mental expectations.

The central city-region of Mazandaran Province, including the cities of Sari, Qaemshahr, Babol, and Amol, contains more than 53% of the population in only 30% of its area. Based on the set of issues that the spatial patterns of sprawling have brought about in the central city-region of Mazandaran Province, a research gap seems to be there in the presentation of a conceptual model of the relations governing the causes of sprawling and the consequences in this city-region. This research attempts to take an effective step in that regard.

Theoretical Framework:

There are two perspectives on the issue of sprawling: spatial and non-spatial. From the spatial point of view, issues such as land use changes, housing and land demands, transportation and infrastructure development, and inefficient land development have been raised, which directly or indirectly affect the causes and consequences of sprawling. From the non-spatial point of view, on the other hand, socio-demographic, economic, environmental, and management and supervisory system issues are discussed, the impacts of which on the causes and consequences of sprawling cannot be ignored. In line with the diversity in the spatial patterns of this type of growth in the urban and regional space, the causes of occurrence and the consequences arising from the spatial patterns of sprawling are different, an issue that is controversial due to the dynamic nature of the phenomenon. If sprawling is accompanied by poor control and supervision, there will be many negative consequences such as development inefficiency, extensive change in land use, destruction and waste of natural lands, excessive growth, increase in land and housing prices, formation and prosperity of temporary residence and second housing patterns, unplanned formation of residential centers, spatial imbalance, change in peri-urban and rural landscape, and combination of urban and rural boundaries. This causes many more issues in the physical and spatial subsystem of the planning environment and also has negative effects on spatial development processes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causes of sprawling by planning subsystems and to analyze the consequences of sprawling and achieve the underlying, causal, and continuity conditions in the city-region under study. This applied descriptive-analytical survey adopts a library-documentary method of data collection.

In the first part, the experts were provided with a questionnaire on the variables affecting sprawling extracted from studies around the world using purposive sampling, and the results were then analyzed using the fuzzy Delphi method. In the second part, structured interviews were made with the experts in the grounded theory system using the MAXQDA software, and they were then reviewed, analyzed, and coded. To investigate the causes of sprawling, 38 variables on 6 factors were provided to 25 experts who were selected based on purposive sampling. We used semi-structured interviews with 34 participants in the study area in order to analyze the consequences of sprawling, studied the spatial consequences of sprawling in the city-region, and specified 249 initial codes and 28 focal codes. Then, we formulated with the technique of continuous comparison the underlying conditions of development and economic structure change, the causal conditions of the inefficiency of the management and supervision system, the conditions to continue the transformation of the local community and destroy the natural structure, the consequences of change in the physical and spatial structure of the extraction area, and the grounded theory of the consequences of sprawling.

The most common causes of sprawling in the study area include per capita household income, land and housing trade, and land prices. In the analysis of the consequences of sprawling, we explained the background conditions for economic development and restructuring, the causal conditions of the inefficiency of the management and supervision system, the conditions of continuity including the transformation of the indigenous community and the destruction of the natural structure, and the consequences of physical and spatial restructuring of the region. To interrupt the process of formation and reduce the negative effects of sprawling, proposals were made on attempts to regulate and reform the decision-making structure, apply economic policies and adjust the market, slow down the accelerated process of destruction of the natural environment, improve the structure of regional planning (draft a codified, updated land use plan, apply detailed policies and ones to avoid promotion of land speculation, avoid provision of construction and building permits for peri-urban lands in the study area, partition natural lands and prioritize future developments in low-value lands, adopt approaches to endogenous development, development in brown lands, and intermediate development, and achieve a sustainable local society.

Urban spaces, especially in historic areas, have undergone a transformation as a result of de-semantic processes and new formulations of declined urban areas. The process has led to a decline in the quality and transformation of the inhabitants’ everyday life in these areas. Since cinematic spaces best reflect the nature of everyday urban life, looking at urban spaces through the lens of the movies may be an approach that enables a new way of encounter with space and history.The relationship between cinematic spaces and urban spaces will help to understand the contrast between urban development and the everyday life of the residents of urban areas from a human point of view, an aspect that has often been neglected by other approaches to urban studies. This relationship, which originates from the emergence of the movies at the heart of the modern urban society and continues to this day, was also manifested in Iran from 1930. In fact, the production of the first moving pictures coincided with major urban developments in the historical center of Tehran.On the other hand, many urban spaces in these areas have gradually been emptied of their original functions and meanings over time, and they have assumed a representative, false function instead. The loss of connection and continuity between the historic area and other parts of the city has led to the transformation of urban spaces into something other than the environment containing the flow of everyday urban life. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to identify and classify urban themes and the dominant patterns of everyday urban life in Tehran’s historical center through visual data and narratives in Iranian movies.

Theoretical Framework:

In order to elaborate on the theoretical framework, it is necessary to explain the notions of space, representation, and everyday life, and this will not be possible without referring to Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre considers space to be three-dimensional, related to society, time, and history. In the book Production of Space, he presents three formulations of the concept of space by stating that urban spaces are created through the dialectical interaction of three modes of production. The first mode is the tangible, material dimension of spatial experience (real space), the second is the representation of space (mental space) as a concept that is built by existing discourses and conventional ideologies, and the third is representational space, or lived space, as aconcept that is understood from space through everyday life and is a combination of the first two forms.Accordingly, reliance on the creative capabilities of the movies demonstrates that the notion of ​​representational spaces in this article can help to understand and explain the evolution of these spaces and the symbolic determination that they accept and display in each period of time.Until achievement of theoretical saturation, the authors continued the review and analysis of the movies based on the criteria taken from the theoretical framework of the research, including the representation of the historic center of Tehran in the movies and the detailed representation of the urban spaces in this area, the connection between the movie plots and the changes made in the function and quality of these spaces as a result  of the intervention policies adopted in the historical center, and the  representation of the everyday life of the residents of historical districts and their methods of resistance against the above developments. In the first phase of thematic analysis, all the elements presented in the movie text which contained meaning related to the purposes of the research were extracted and translated into semantic expressions. In the next phase, the frequent concepts were outlined and highlighted. Then, the categories formed from the selected relevant codes were classified under one main theme, and this process continued until theoretical saturation was achieved.Finally, in the explanation of each theme, the movies were described and analyzed based on the common themes that make up a central category and based on a time trend. While drawing the semantic and historical relationships between the main themes, the authors portrayed the transformations taking place in the representation of urban spaces under each main theme and in each historical period.

Utilizing the method of thematic analysis in the study of Iranian movies, this research seeks to adopt a new approach to spatial transformation in this area. For this purpose, thirty Iranian movies released between 1964 and 2019 were selected to make up the sample.

The findings demonstrate that the Iranian movies are capable of providing a rich image of the relationship between the evolution of urban spaces and the patterns of everyday urban life in Tehran’s historic area. These patterns are formulated in five themes under the following titles: urban transformation, conversion of the social context in Tehran’s historic area, wandering around the city, social life at a caravanserai, and resistance efforts in everyday urban life in Tehran’s historic area.

It seems that the image represented in Iranian movies of everyday interactions in the historic area of Tehran has been severely damaged in the recent decades. Spaces that were once reflected as places of praxis and resistance are represented today as dangerous, isolated spaces, which is a result of injecting new meaning into the urban area and manipulating the citizens’ mental image.Meanwhile, the approach adopted in some movies to depicting the methods of resistance in everyday urban life turns into something more than just a representation of space. In other words, perhaps due to the inherent nature of the image in the representation of reality and the filmmaker’s creativity in the reflection of liberating forms, the characters of a movie can challenge the structure of the social environment using unconventional forms of presence in space and creating meaning through resistance efforts and praxis in urban life.

Today, social capital is an indicator of growth and development in societies, without which it is highly challenging to achieve development at different levels. This capital increases investment in the fields of physical capital and human capital and establishes the structures created by public and private sector agents. Housing is one of the most important human needs leading to social conflicts or peace in different ages. The occurrence of each of these conditions is directly related to the amount of social capital among the residents, from the point of view that the social norths and souths in cities have turned into a concept for class distinction. Projects like Mehr Dwellings may have been capable of meeting the housing market needs in terms of quantity and shelter to a large extent, but what is stated in the theoretical literature on social housing at the global level, i.e. the level of satisfaction of residents of social housing projects, concerns the conditions therein in social, cultural, and other terms. It seems that the Mehr Dwellings project was carried out in a hasty manner regardless of basic criteria such as social capital. Therefore, the current research seeks to investigate the social capital conditions among the residents of Mehr Dwellings in the city of Sanandaj, Iran and the effective sociological factors. The questions raised on that basis concern the level of social capital among the residents of Mehr Dwellings in Sanandaj based on the above indicators and the extent to which sociological and contextual factors have affected each dimension of social capital.

Theoretical Framework:

The theoretical framework of the current research is based on the theories available in the field of social capital and the studies conducted in Iran and around the world on the research title. The structure of social capital is investigated here based on the socio-cultural dimensions of the Mehr Dwellings project. Following the discussion, the conceptual model of the research, which involves the link between the research literature and the results, is formulated in the concluding section.

The current research is a quantitative survey and therefore involves a method of data collection in which certain groups of people are asked to answer a certain number of specific questions, which are the same for all respondents. The research population includes all the households in the Mehr Dwellings in Sanandaj in 2019. According to the statistics published by Kurdistan Province Directorate-General for Roads and Urban Development, there are 38,000 Mehr Dwellings in the whole province, of which 13,606 have been built and submitted in Sanandaj, where a population of 43,091 people lives (Kurdistan Province Directorate-General for Roads and Urban Development, 2018). The statistical sample includes people over eighteen years of age residing in 7,600 Mehr Dwellings in Baharan Neighborhood in 2019. The sample size was specified through Cochran’s formula, based on which a size of 340 people was estimated; given the possibility of drop in the sample size, 10% was added to this number, and 374 people were finally selected to make up the study sample. The sampling methods included clustering according to Mehr Dwellings blocks and random selection of people over 18 years of age. In the selection of the samples, we tried to observe the age and sex combination as far as possible. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire, the formal and content validity of which were evaluated by experts in the fields of urban development and sociology. Moreover, the validity of the questions was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.849, which indicates the appropriate reliability and validity. As a research measurement tool, the SPSS version 21 software was used to analyze the data in two sections: descriptive and inferential.

The findings of the research demonstrated that there are significant positive relationships between the social capital of residents of Mehr Dwellings and a number of the variables making up the level of apartment life standards, including the degree of neighborhood relations, the level of acquaintance with the social environment, satisfaction with the place of residence, access to facilities, and the quality of urban services and infrastructures, and the contextual variables of residence background, income, and marital status. The statistical results demonstrated that there is no significant relationship between the residents’ social capital and the variables of social relations and type of residence and contextual variables (age, gender, occupation, and academic degree). Apartment life standards and social capital among the residents of Baharan Mehr Dwellings will not change overnight, because the residents of these blocks are mainly immigrants from villages, unemployed people, female householders, urban subordinates in sociological terms. Corridors of social relations are limited, while there are stable conditions from another point of view. Although the residents’ harmony has undergone major changes during the past two years due to the high costs of housing, fundamental measures need to be taken by the institutions and trustees in the urban area. According to the results of the research, important actions to be taken in the current conditions include the participation of citizens in the affairs of the neighborhood, enhancement of the infrastructure and access networks, formation of civil institutions, and establishment of service and security institutions.

The results of the multivariate regression analysis also indicate that the variables of apartment life standards, neighborhood relations, and level of acquaintance impact the social capital of the residents of Mehr Dwellings and explain 32% of the changes in the dependent variable.

The increasing population has changed the morphology of cities and caused changes in the surrounding environmental conditions. Green space per capita is about 4.5 square meters in Iran, which is quite different from the global standard: 20 to 25 square meters per person (Haashemi et al., 2016). As a result, it seems necessary to increase the amount of greenery in cities. Lee et al. (2016) introduce shading and ventilation as the main factors in the improvement of thermal comfort conditions in the environment using trees. Vegetation reduces mean radiant temperature and improves environmental conditions through evaporation and daylight control and reflection (Salata et al., 2017). It plays a major role in the regulation of weather conditions by controlling and conducting wind flow and reducing wind speed and pressure (Perini et al., 2018).

Theoretical Framework:

Thermal comfort involves conditions of perception in which the surrounding environment is thermally satisfactory (Ashrae, 1997). In their review of the studies conducted in the field of thermal comfort in outdoor spaces, Johnson et al. have introduced the predicted survey average index as one of the most widely used indices among ones such as SET and UTCI. (Johansson et al., 2013). This index has been widely used in different regions with different climates (El-Bardisy et al., 2016; Salata et al., 2015; Abdi et al., 2020). This model was designed by Fanger in 1970, considering factors such as air temperature, average radiant temperature, and relative humidity and two personal variables including clothing resistance and activity level, used as a composite index. This index specifies the coefficients that are measured according to Asher’s thermal scale and indicates the average thermal sensation of a large group of people in a certain space (Fanger, 1970). Therefore, considering and measuring this index causes othermicroclimatic factors to be taken into account and obtained through the following formulae:PMV=(0.303e-0.036m+0.028)[(M-W)-H-Ec-crec-Erec] E=3.05×10-3(256tsk-3373-pa)+Esw Ec=3.05×10-3[6.99×5733(M-W)-pa]+0.42(M-W-58.15) Crec=0.0014M(34-Ta) Erec=1.72×10-5M(5867-Pa). The value of H can be measured directly and calculated using the following equation:H=Kcl=tsk-tcl/Icl. Moreover, previous research has pointed out the importance of planting patterns, trees, and vegetation and their impact on the environmental and microclimatic conditions of the region. The question that arises now is what kind of tree planting pattern, among the common ones, can have a better impact on the environment. In this study, therefore, the four common planting patterns of sextuple, quadruple, row, and scattered were selected to be applied in the same conditions and with the same number of trees.

In this research, the ENVI-met software was used because the output provides most of the parameters required for thermal comfort, such as Ta, Tmrt, and wind speed (Taleghani et al., 2015), and the results have been validated and used by researchers (Taleghani et al., 2018). For data measurement, five receptors were selected at the central points of the site. These receptors were located so as to be scattered in the site and be capable of expressing the general state thereof. Therefore, three receptors at the central points of the site and two located around the site were selected. Moreover, because the average human height between the positions of sitting and standing is 1.50 meters, the simulation measurement was carried out at this height. The environmental data and information on the receptors were extracted during the study hours (10 am to 9 pm), and the average value was calculated for the predicted survey average index.

The analysis of the data and figures extracted from the software demonstrates that a more uniform shade is created in the environment in the scattered pattern than in the others, and because the trees are scattered in most parts of the site, solar access is more limited there than in the other scenarios. Moreover, ventilation conditions are easier in the row pattern than in the scattered pattern, and the warm wind passes through the trees more easily there due to the regular arrangement. Therefore, the best planting pattern is the one that creates the more uniform shade and better ventilation conditions. However, the results of the scattered pattern are the same in most parts of the site, and there is only a little difference between them in some cases. As a result, the scattered and row patterns of tree planting are better than mass planting and concentrated in certain parts of the site.

The results of comparing the treeless scenario to the others demonstrate that the thermal comfort conditions change to a large extent, and all scenarios create better environmental conditions than the treeless state. Moreover, because the row pattern exhibits a lower average PMV for most receptors and most hours of the day, it is the best pattern. The sextuple pattern has high indices in most cases, and the quadruple pattern has a similar function to the sextuple one. Therefore, it can be concluded that the row and scattered patterns create better comfort conditions than the others. The results of this research can be used by architects, landscape designers, and urban designers. In this research, different patterns of trees have been compared, so future research can involve comparison of other plantings such as grass and shrubs and of the effects of different planting patterns.