Urban Design
Mozhgan Jafari; Bahram Siavashpuor; Abasalt Askari
Abstract
Plenty of research has been conducted worldwide on the notion of segregation and the factors effective on it. Globalization, economic crises, rise and fall of governments, and failure to invest in the housing sector are some of the major factors that have made segregation severer in cities. The current ...
Read More
Plenty of research has been conducted worldwide on the notion of segregation and the factors effective on it. Globalization, economic crises, rise and fall of governments, and failure to invest in the housing sector are some of the major factors that have made segregation severer in cities. The current conditions of segregation and discriminatory behavior indicate the potential for economic growth without exploitation, including human resources and social and economic communication. Cities have turned into more of places where phenomena such as extreme poverty, social harm, and social segregation are concentrated. As a term, segregation, which denotes separation of some individuals in a group from others, is a major urban problem that jeopardizes integration in the city, and prevents it from functioning properly as a single whole. A variety of approaches have been adopted to confront segregation, including the analytical approach adopted in this research to investigation of segregation from environmental, physical, and spatial aspects. The theoretical framework of the research for the study of this urban problem involves the theory of space syntax examined from the perspective of urban space configuration. The theory is based on the idea that there is mutual interaction between the physical and social structures of the city. This research involves a case study of a district in the city of Sabzevar, Iran known as Kuye Golestan, and is aimed at reducing social segregation by identifying its physical structure and presenting solutions for its improvement. The investigation also seeks to assess the effects of syntactic variables on non-syntactic parameters to help obtain a specific classification of the factors with the greatest impacts on the physical structure. This is an exploratory study with a hybrid method, where both quantitative and qualitative methods are used for answering the research questions. The qualitative method was implemented through a field study using observation as a technique and a checklist as a tool, and the quantitative method was implemented through a spatial analysis of the axial lines in the UCL Depthmap software environment. The syntactic variables were assessed as independent ones, and the non-syntactic variables as dependent ones, and the relationships between them were finally evaluated using multivariate linear regression analysis in SPSS. The results of the study demonstrated that there were significant relationships between the syntactic variables and lighting, landscape, noticeable corners, convenience, valued elements, entrances and openings, building quality, and building age, in order of priority. On that basis, maximal changes in the physical structure are expected to be achieved through changes made in the above variables, which would lead to changes in the social structure.
Urban Design
Abstract
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. ...
Read More
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.
