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 ...
Read More
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.
Urban Sustainability
Islam Karami; parisa mohamadhoseini
Abstract
Mehr housing developments typify the problem of increasing building density in modern urbanism, a state of affairs with manifold repercussions. The Mehr housing complexes in Ardabil consist stereotypically of apartment buildings tightly jammed together, without regard to every environmental and human ...
Read More
Mehr housing developments typify the problem of increasing building density in modern urbanism, a state of affairs with manifold repercussions. The Mehr housing complexes in Ardabil consist stereotypically of apartment buildings tightly jammed together, without regard to every environmental and human aspect. As rather densely populated complexes and prospective accommodations for upcoming generations, they warrant serious attention in terms of social sustainability. It is indeed possible to make amends for the human and social aspects overlooked in the original designs by enhancing the physical environment. Hence, the present study explored the role of sociable public spaces in social sustainability of residential complexes, seeking to promote social identity and vitality in contemporary urban structures. The examined cases were three Mehr housing developments in Ardabil, namely Niayesh, Vahdat, and Andisheh. Our hypothesis stated that the presence of sociable public spaces at the concerned developments correlated significantly with their social sustainability. The adopted method combined qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the applied strategies included logical reasoning, comparison, and correlation. At first, documentary and analytical studies were embarked on to extract the facets and variables of social sustainability and sociability of the spaces. To measure the two concepts of “space sociability” and “social sustainability”, the designed models incorporated the spatial-physical components of the former and the human and social dimensions of the latter. Questionnaires designed with respect to the research components were distributed among the local residents. The variables of the two concepts and their correlation at the complexes were interpreted by analyzing the data from the questionnaires through one sample t-test and Pearson’s correlation using SPSS. Results of these analyses suggest that establishing sociable spaces will positively contribute to social sustainability of residential complexes, and that Andisheh exhibits relatively higher levels of the two concepts among the examined cases. The next step involved the analysis of spatial and physical facets of the public spaces of the complexes. The data resulting from the analysis of the questionnaires were related to the results of interviews and observations. The variables and environmental attributes pertaining to the sociability of public spaces of the residential complexes were then extracted and classified. The paper concludes by offering a series of solutions, including provision of sociable spaces such as green areas, children’s playgrounds, and commercial and cultural centers, allowing for proper physical-social sizes of the spaces, enhancing environmental welfare, and taking account of visual diversity, all of which will ensure sociability of public spaces at the residential complexes, thereby promoting social sustainability. Sociable places can be regarded as multi-purpose spaces that can accommodate various activities and appeal to different groups, thus intensifying human interactions. The physical-social size of a space is correlated with the sense of security, sense of affinity, and identification with the environment. Environmental welfare is related to being satisfied with the physical environment and to the desire for spending more time at and relishing the space, whereas visual variety makes the space appealing and inviting.
Slum Settlements
Saeid Alitajer; Pooria Saadativaghar; Mohammad Bashir Robati; Ahmad Heydari
Abstract
In recent years, for reasons such as population growth, increased rural migration, and the migrants’ financial inability to afford housing, the host cities are facing the problem of illegal settlements that are built densely without observing the principles of construction. These are usually known ...
Read More
In recent years, for reasons such as population growth, increased rural migration, and the migrants’ financial inability to afford housing, the host cities are facing the problem of illegal settlements that are built densely without observing the principles of construction. These are usually known as informal settlements which face many problems. One of the problems is the lack of social spaces that could act as the pillar of urban life. The issue of socialization and social interactions has been neglected in marginal and informal urban contexts, but it is more important that than in other contexts. It is because these contexts are in fact one of the most prominent manifestations of urban poverty in most Iranian cities with migration inflow. The promotion of socialization in these informal settlements, which are a part of the city’s body, is one of the main goals for increasing public welfare and citizens’ peace through the provision of their social needs. In recent years, hybrid studies have considered the relationship between cognitive maps and spatial configuration in assessing the shape of the constructed environment, but few studies have focused on adapting the findings of space layout approach by comparing cognitive maps when studying and measuring social behaviors of citizens in one of the most problematic urban contexts, i.e. informal settlements. This is an innovation in this research, an applied area and a step forward in the field of urban psychology, which can help urban planners and decision makers to identify and improve the morphology of more sociable urban neighborhoods. The present study seeks to investigate the effect of the physical-spatial characteristics of these settlements on sociability by examining the neighborhoods of Hesar and Dizaj in Hamedan. In the first step, the related literature and theoretical concepts were reviewed by library research and consulting with valuable sources on spatial configuration, socialization, and informal settlements. In the second step, the maps of the two neighborhoods were simulated in the Space Syntax software and analyzed formally and morphologically as follows. In the analysis of research data, in line with the natural motion theory, the role of spatial configuration was examined in the formation of behavioral and social patterns (in particular, socialization behavior). In fact, this applied study is based on a mixed methodology. In the first step, quantitative techniques were used along with the theory of natural motion, the theory of space syntax, as well as Arc GIS and UCL Depth Map software packages to analyze spatial configuration and its role in the social behavior of citizens with the aim of specifying the physical-spatial factors which influence sociability in urban spaces. The next step aimed at determining the validity and reliability of the results. In this step, the quantitative results were reconsidered by means of the qualitative method of cognitive maps. According to the findings, spatial configuration may affect the sociability of informal settlements through five indicators, namely, control, connectivity, integration, depth, and legibility. It may also affect people’s attendance, motion, face-to-face contact, and conversations (which are the major prerequisites of the formation of social interactions). Our analysis of the abovementioned informal settlements shows that the maps of the quantitative method of space syntax almost overlap with the qualitative cognitive maps. A comparison between the two neighborhoods indicates that the tree-like and continuous space configuration of Dizaj creates a motion pattern that leads to social interactions in the middle parts of the neighborhood whereas the shrub-like configuration in Hesar distributes the patterns of motion and social behavior all over the neighborhood and leads to more desirable social effects.
