Urban Design
Kimia Haghnegahdar; mahsa sholeh; Sahand Lotfi; Alireza Sadeghi
Abstract
Highlights- The historical design of the Sang-e Siah neighborhood passively harmonized with climatic conditions, ensuring high spatial quality and thermal comfort.- Physical modifications in Shiraz's historical urban fabric have weakened the ability of urban geometry to regulate microclimatic conditions ...
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Highlights- The historical design of the Sang-e Siah neighborhood passively harmonized with climatic conditions, ensuring high spatial quality and thermal comfort.- Physical modifications in Shiraz's historical urban fabric have weakened the ability of urban geometry to regulate microclimatic conditions effectively.- Neglecting the microclimatic effects of urban geometry leads to a decline in both thermal comfort and environmental quality in urban open spaces.- The principles embedded in Shiraz's historical urban design provide valuable insights for sustainable and climate-responsive urban development.IntroductionThe rapid pace of urbanization and its associated environmental challenges, coupled with the rising demand for energy to regulate thermal conditions, have underscored the necessity of addressing the microclimatic consequences of urban development. Given the increasing global temperatures and the urgency of climate adaptation, it is essential to examine the impact of urban form on microclimatic conditions and thermal comfort.The historical urban fabric of Shiraz, particularly in the Sang-e Siah neighborhood, represents an exemplary case of passive adaptation to climatic conditions. Through careful spatial planning, traditional urban layouts optimized thermal comfort by minimizing solar exposure and enhancing ventilation. However, recent modifications to the city's historical districts have undermined these adaptive strategies, leading to increased urban heat stress and a reduction in outdoor comfort levels.Meteorological records from Shiraz indicate a persistent rise in average temperatures, aligning with global climate change trends. These data highlight the importance of incorporating climate-sensitive urban design strategies to improve thermal comfort. The traditional design of Shiraz’s historic districts, characterized by narrow alleys, shaded pathways, and strategically oriented streets, exemplifies an effective response to the city's climatic challenges. This study aims to quantitatively assess the impact of geometric transformations in the Sang-e Siah neighborhood on microclimatic conditions and thermal comfort.Theoretical FrameworkUrban geometry consists of key parameters such as the sky view factor (SVF), height-to-width (H/W) ratio, and street orientation, all of which play a critical role in influencing climatic factors such as solar radiation exposure, wind flow, temperature distribution, and humidity retention. These elements collectively determine the thermal comfort of outdoor urban spaces.A reciprocal relationship exists between urban microclimates and broader climatic systems, with urban geometry serving as a crucial intermediary. By adopting climate-responsive urban design principles, planners and designers can mitigate unfavorable microclimatic effects, ensuring more livable and thermally comfortable urban environments. This study examines the extent to which changes in urban form influence these parameters and provides recommendations for sustainable urban planning practices.MethodologyThis research employs a descriptive-analytical approach and falls within the category of applied studies. Data collection was carried out through a combination of historical document analysis, field surveys, and meteorological data evaluation. The ENVI-met software, a highly reliable microclimate simulation tool, was utilized to model the impact of physical alterations on thermal comfort in the Sang-e Siah neighborhood.To ensure the accuracy of the findings, simulated results were compared against on-site temperature, humidity, and wind speed measurements. The study focused on the hottest day of the year—July 1, 2022—to capture extreme temperature conditions and their effects on urban microclimates. This methodological approach provides a robust basis for assessing the thermal performance of the historical urban geometry and its contemporary modifications.Discussion and FindingsThe findings of this study underscore the significant impact of geometric transformations in the neighborhood on microclimatic conditions. Specifically, the increase in SVF and the reduction in H/W ratios have resulted in the following effects:Elevated ambient temperatures due to increased exposure to solar radiation.Enhanced radiant heat effects, leading to a measurable decline in thermal comfort.Increased wind speeds in specific areas, contributing to dust dispersion while simultaneously reducing humidity levels.Decreased humidity, which intensifies heat stress and exacerbates outdoor discomfort.These combined effects have significantly reduced outdoor thermal comfort in the study area. The results emphasize the importance of maintaining traditional urban design principles to ensure microclimatic stability in historic districts.ConclusionThis study confirms that urban geometry variables such as SVF, H/W ratio, and street orientation play a fundamental role in shaping microclimatic conditions. The historical structures in Shiraz were designed in harmony with local climatic conditions, employing passive cooling strategies that enhanced thermal comfort in outdoor spaces. However, modern transformations—particularly the widening of streets and reductions in building heights—have disrupted this balance, exacerbating urban heat stress.To promote sustainable urban development, urban planners and designers should integrate lessons from Shiraz’s historical urban fabric. Strategies such as limiting SVF through shaded pathways, maintaining optimal H/W ratios for improved thermal regulation, and orienting streets to maximize natural ventilation can serve as effective guidelines for improving urban thermal comfort in Shiraz and other arid cities experiencing similar climatic challenges.
Seyed Mojtaba Fakhrahmad; Sahand Lotfi; Golrokh Zolghadri; Zahra Namdari Noruzani
Abstract
Highlights
Internal and environmental features relevant to street music are investigated to allow discovery of the predictors of the sociability of the public realm.
Voluntary presence, active social presence, and passive social presence are examined as three types of public life characteristic.
Environmental ...
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Highlights
Internal and environmental features relevant to street music are investigated to allow discovery of the predictors of the sociability of the public realm.
Voluntary presence, active social presence, and passive social presence are examined as three types of public life characteristic.
Environmental factors have a predominant impact on the citizens’ attendance of music performance venues as compared to internal factors.
Introduction
The physical expansion of cities and the proliferation of motor vehicle use have led to the fact that contemporary public spaces are less primed to people’s daily commute. In such circumstances, cultural events held at the heart of the urban settings turn up essential to the improvement of the socialization potentials of the public realm. Street music is a type of cultural micro-event emerging in the public domain, which affects the public life of urban spaces by boosting the socio-cultural qualities of the public realm. The purpose of this study was to compare the impacts of the different forms of citizen presence in public spaces, including voluntary presence, inactive social presence, and active social presence during the street music performance, and to compare the impacts of environmental and relevant internal factors on audience enthusiasm.
Street performance in Iran has not been limited to a specific era, and the contents have mainly included narration of the lives of mythical figures and praise for the kings. Reproducibility can be considered as a major characteristic of these performances, which have been well integrated with urban open spaces from the past to the present, both individually and collectively.
Theoretical framework
Pioneers of public life studies have pointed out several categorizations of presence in urban public spaces mainly through direct observation. Since most of today’s cities are automobile-oriented, citizens’ mandatory attendance of public spaces is not usually observed. Their voluntary activities, however, could be encouraged through enhancement of the quality of the characteristics of the space. Improvement of the quality of public spaces is aimed at making these spaces more sociable through facilitation of social activities, which are mainly dependent on the contribution of more and more citizens in voluntary activities. Temporary communication among people in public spaces creates a third form of activity, namely social activity, which could be performed either actively or passively. The latter is more important to public life researchers because livable spaces are those where a variety of social activities are held.
One of the most important events that occur at music venues is the provision of the opportunity to gain more knowledge of other people’s cultures, which realized through face-to-face interactions with other people at such places. A Music venue can also define the identity of a street or neighborhood or evoke shared memories of a community.
Urban soundscape is affected much more by street music performances than urban landscape. Sounds heard at public spaces are twofold: main sounds and background sounds, which could lead to different perceptions of soundscape at these spaces.
Therefore, street music performance plays a significant role in the revitalization of the urban public realm by attracting people in both static and dynamic modes, on the one hand, and encouraging their long-term interaction with each other, on the other.
Methodology
The present descriptive-analytical study used data obtained through distribution of 250 questionnaires, in the form of a Likert scale, randomly among people present at six sites of street music performance in the city of Shiraz, Iran. Ordinal logistic regression was carried out to obtain the main predictors of presence at the street music venues. The dependent variables included the tendency to perform voluntary activities, the tendency to perform active social activities, and the tendency to perform passive social activities. The independent variables fell into two categories: the environmental factors associated with music performance in urban spaces, including perceived security, sense of pleasure, place identity, and psychological comfort, and the internal factors associated with music performance in urban spaces, including interest in music, performance venue, performers’ mobility, and music sound clarity.
Results and discussion
The results of the ordinal logistic regression analysis indicated that passive social presence was affected by street music performance more than the other two components. Moreover, environmental factors relevant to street music had predominant impacts on the citizens’ attendance of these urban spaces as compared to internal factors. Of the significant predictors of voluntary presence, gender, sound clarity, and sense of pleasure were found to be the most important among all the variables, the internal variables, and the environmental variables, respectively. Passive social presence was mainly determined by the sense of pleasure, the most effective factor in both the complete model and the set of environmental features, and by sound clarity, the most effective factor in the set of internal variables. Active social presence was predicted mainly by gender, perceived security, and sound clarity, the most important factors in the sets of all variables, environmental variables, and internal variables, respectively.
Conclusion
Based on the results derived from the case study, a policy was proposed to provide the venues with advanced equipment and adapt the musicians’ technical levels given the importance of each space in order to increase the vibrant attendance of the public realm. Another suggestion was to apply a policy combined with incentives and deterrent initiatives to adjust the environmental quality of the venues.
