Urban Design
Shirin Eslami; ahmad shahivandi
Abstract
Highlights- The functional activity component exhibits the greatest weight in the measurement of the sense of place in the Qods district of the city of Qom, Iran.- The physical-visual component has the lowest weight in the measurement of the sense of place in the residents of the Qods district.- Structural ...
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Highlights- The functional activity component exhibits the greatest weight in the measurement of the sense of place in the Qods district of the city of Qom, Iran.- The physical-visual component has the lowest weight in the measurement of the sense of place in the residents of the Qods district.- Structural equation modeling indicates the optimal fit for the sense of place measurement model in the residents of the Qods district.- The indicator of invitation has the highest weight in the specification of the sense of place of the residents of the Qods district. IntroductionThe 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 FrameworkThe 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. MethodologyThis 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.Results and DiscussionThe 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.ConclusionThe 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.
Urban Planning
ahmad shahivandi
Abstract
The creative city perspective is based on the use of all city potentials to improve public spaces, culture, security, safety and communications. One of the most important tools to do so is new technologies including communication and electronic networks. Technologies, including ICT, are instrumrnts that ...
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The creative city perspective is based on the use of all city potentials to improve public spaces, culture, security, safety and communications. One of the most important tools to do so is new technologies including communication and electronic networks. Technologies, including ICT, are instrumrnts that can act as a mechanism for the establishment of creative cities using the global experiences. The dissemination of information through Internet, communication through e-mail and municipalities’ websites, and the use of virtual reality communication to highlight the results of a planning process serve as a new tool to achieve transparency, accountability and efficiency in urban systems. With the passage of time and rapid evolution of technologies in Isfahan , as one of the cultural and historical cities of Iran, there is a need for changes in the attitude and style of architecture and urban design that fit people’ everyday needs and problems. Electronic tools seek to create a virtual world. In the field of urban planning, they seek to create shopping places, offices, banks, etc., such that there would be little need for physical construction and creative people would use their technical knowledge and intelligence to provide high quality services, and physical buildings would be replaced with communications and network infrastructure. At the same time, a large part of urban spaces would be changed into recreation and leisure time places.Therefore, this research investigates the impact of new technologies on creative city with an emphasis on Isfahan. In this research, some features such as “variety, universality and being up-to-date”, as ICT’s criteria, have been studied in order to fulfil the indexes of creative city including “creativity and domestic potential, physical-spatial structure of the city and socio-economic properties”. This research is practical in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytic in terms of methodology. Library studies and inquiry method are used to gather information. The field study data is obtained by distributing questionnaires among 210 urban experts and 30 IT experts in Isfahan. After entering the variables and editing them in SPSS, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in Amos Graphic was used to classify variables and demonstrate the relationship between new communication technologies and creative city. Likert scale was used to measure the variables. The obtained results show that the factor of being up-to-date has an impact on all aspects of creative city such as creativity and domestic potential, physical structure of city and socio-economic properties; the effect of this factor is more significant than other factors (such as universality and variety of new technologies). The universality factor only affects creativity and improving domestic potential and variety of new technologies factor only influences the socio-economic function of the city.In other words, we can say that being up-to-date in different sites and providing online information can increase creativity and improve the domestic potential, change physical and spatial structure of the city, improve social science and reduce personal referrals. Based on the results, the impact of being up-to-date on the factors of creative city is more significant than that of other factors, but the ideal situation for realization of creative city will occur when the new technologies in different aspects are able to have positive effects on the social and physical structure of the city.
