Urban Sustainability
Ali Riahi Dehkordi; Mahdi Montazerolhodjah
Abstract
Highlights
In general, the difference between this research and others lies in the different time period and the type of perspective of this research, as detailed below.
This research was conducted during the Covid-19 epidemic, adopting a detailed approach to the research ...
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Highlights
In general, the difference between this research and others lies in the different time period and the type of perspective of this research, as detailed below.
This research was conducted during the Covid-19 epidemic, adopting a detailed approach to the research problem.
Among all the dimensions of the quality of life, only the physical dimension and its variables were addressed.
The research adopted a mental approach to measure the physical quality of life of people living in the relevant neighborhoods during the epidemic.
Introduction
A new type of global bio-experience was formed following the spread of Covid-19, and this emerging phenomenon is considered as the biggest challenge and international problem of mankind since World War II. This epidemic also affected and changed people’s mental images of their cities and residences. If the history of epidemic diseases is a guide for urban officials, the outbreak of this disease can also involve a series of important urban policies adopted to improve people’s quality of life in cities and their places of residence. Due to the changes in citizens’ lifestyles and their exile from public urban spaces to spend most of their times in their residences, these neighborhoods could play an important role in the battle against the virus by raising the residents’ quality of life. Among the factors that affect people’s quality of life in the localities, the body exhibits a tremendous impact by getting involved in the organization of the environment in order to break the chain of virus transmission.
Theoretical Framework
Epidemics of infectious diseases have always been part of the history of cities. By reviewing the history of epidemics, one can gain more insight into the consequences of changes in the design of cities, urban zoning laws, and the primary concepts of quarantine. The Covid -19 virus has also been added to a long list of rapidly spreading infectious diseases in the current century, such as tuberculosis in Southern Africa in 2006 and Ebola in Western Africa in 2014.
Generally, actions taken against urban crises can be divided into the short-term and medium-term categories in terms of response time. The former deals with functional interventions, and the latter involves basic interventions in the structure of a city. Short-term functional measures include planning to make cities more flexible, considering the role of neighborhoods and their function in satisfaction of the residents’ needs, raising the quality of housing, etc. On the other hand, medium-term actions attempt to reconstruct the healthcare systems, take urgent health measures, etc.
The term quality of life (QoL) originally meant good life, and was limited to the notions of having or not having common consumer goods, being rich, owning a car, and owning a house. The concept gradually evolved to include life satisfaction. In the classification of quality of life, two objective and subjective states can be noted. Objectivity concerns the degree to which a life conforms to the correct standards of good life and is evaluated using objective criteria that can be collected, recorded, and visualized from relevant statistical data in an accessible data platform. The mental state pertains to self-evaluation based on implicit and subjective criteria and includes feelings, individuals’ or groups’ opinions, and satisfaction with life, which is a function of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The quality of life, however, can include dimensions such as social, economic, and physical ones. The physical dimension is one of the most important aspects that exhibit great impacts in the field. The components of the physical dimension are numerous and can include the quality of the surrounding neighborhood landscapes, lighting, air and noise pollution, access to facilities in the neighborhoods, etc.
Methodology
This research is considered as an applied quantitative study. The survey and descriptive research methods were used in the sections on the research background, theoretical framework development, and data extraction, and the causal-comparative method was used in the analysis phase. The present study sought to compare the differences in the physical factors affecting the mental quality of life from residents’ perspective in the contemporary residential areas of Iran during the current pandemic crisis (Covid-19 virus) in three urban scales: metropolitan areas (with populations over 1 million people), medium-sized cities (with populations from 500 thousand to 1 million people), and small towns (with populations of 200-500 thousand people).
Since the quality of residential environments is a subjective concept and is retrieved from the subjective perspectives of people, the approach adopted in this research is also subjective.
The research data were collected through distribution of an online questionnaire to measure the relationship between people and their surrounding environments. The questions were designed based on 38 indicators in 6 categories: environmental health, lighting, mental health, accessibility, and environmental and residential design.
Discussion and Results
The most seriously involved urban element in the crisis of Covid-19 pandemic, urban neighborhoods have played a key role in the attempt to cut the chain of virus transmission. The results obtained from this research indicate that the residents of metropolitan neighborhoods believe in the physical quality of their lives in these neighborhoods as higher in the areas of mental health, environmental design, lighting, and housing. This lies in the category of environmental health in medium-sized cities and in the category of accessibility in small cities. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the categories of environmental health, lighting, access, and environmental and residential design and their relevant indicators do not exhibit a significant difference between the three urban groups, and it is only the category of mental health that does. This difference points out that greater attention is paid to people’s psyche than to the environment physics in such crises.
Conclusion
The results of this research suggest that future studies can be conducted to investigate issues such as the role of maintaining mental health in epidemic crises, the effect of environmental design in the improvement of people’s mental health in epidemic crises, and the effect of the quality of public spaces in the control of factors harming people’s mental health in crises.
Finally, suggestions such as the following can be made given the priority of the residents’ perspective in all the three urban scales toward the stability and responsiveness of the neighborhoods during the viral disease epidemic crisis:
1- to increase the psychological security of pedestrian paths during public quarantines due to reduced attendance by adapting side street paths and those away from residential environments through placement of monitoring kiosks
2- to organize the pedestrian access network in order to facilitate access to residential houses in the epidemic crisis by making access paths more legible, considering lighting, doing environmental design, and placing visual signs therein
3- to design appropriate vegetation to reduce the noise pollution of vehicles and prevent the transmission of traffic noise into residential spaces in order to keep people calm during the period of illness.
