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.
