Urban Planning
sepideh taban tarashkar; parvin partovi
Abstract
Uncontrolled urban development in the present age has caused many problems that cannot be solved by traditional management and requires the participation of all citizens in the administration of urban affairs. Today, citizen participation and its application in urban planning, as one of the characteristics ...
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Uncontrolled urban development in the present age has caused many problems that cannot be solved by traditional management and requires the participation of all citizens in the administration of urban affairs. Today, citizen participation and its application in urban planning, as one of the characteristics of the development of a country, is considered by designers and urban planners. Citizen participation is effective in the success of local development plans, so it has become one of the main issues of urban planning today. The role of children, who make one third of urban population (citizens), is neglected in many cases. In recent years, there has been much research on children’s participation, but it can be said that, in practical terms, this concept faces many obstacles. Many of the issues we are facing today, such as leaving the neighborhood, lack of security, etc., are due to neglecting all citizens, especially children, in the city and, at a smaller scale, in the neighborhood. Accordingly, it is essential that children participate in local development planning. Undoubtedly, children’s participation needs a thorough perception of the concepts related to child. It requires a full understanding of the concepts of the child and the benefits and challenges of children’s participation. Finally, it is necessary to answer the question of what the methods of children’s participation in the process of preparing and implementing local development planning are. The theoretical foundation and global experiences related to children’s participation is presented to answer this question. Then, the case study of Sarshoor neighborhood is introduced and the results are presented. Finally, the conclusions are made based on the analysis of theoretical concepts, answering the main questions by Delphi method, and experts’ opinions. The results indicate that contextualization is the most influential factor in the planning process, as compared to other factors including culture-building, institutionalization and durability of participation. The two factors of institutionalization and participation control are the most influential factors in the implementation of plans. When these factors are realized, children tend to become more involved in the development process of the neighborhood because (1) their abilities focus on themselves in this process, (2) they are provided with an opportunity in this process, (3) participation methods become available to them, and (4) they become aware of their rights. At the end, the cycle of the process of neighborhood development projects is proposed based on the components of children’s participation in the Sarshoor neighborhood. The findings of this study will not only help planners and designers to better understand the way children are involved in planning and designing processes, but also provide an appropriate framework for using effective factors on the participation of children in local development projects. It is suggested that the factors proposed in this paper be applied according to the specific conditions and characteristics of each neighborhood.
Urban Design
m h; sh e; enayat alah mohaghegh nasab
Abstract
At the present time, children’s rights and their participation in urbanism have found a special place in the world’s urbanism experiences. This approach allows children to influence and contribute to the planning and design of their environment. Since creating urban spaces in participatory ...
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At the present time, children’s rights and their participation in urbanism have found a special place in the world’s urbanism experiences. This approach allows children to influence and contribute to the planning and design of their environment. Since creating urban spaces in participatory process focuses on the stakeholders’ ideas, making suitable urban spaces for children necessitates their cooperation in the planning and design processes. Also, because of children’s different point of view of the city comparing to adults’, children’s participation methods will be different in urban planning and design process. Applying descriptive analysis method, this article reviews children’s participation concepts and process in creating children-friendly urban spaces. A pattern will be extracted for children’s participation process in the city to answer the questions of how to codify a participatory pattern based on teaching and creating a common language with children and what is the meaningful relationship between trained children’s ideas and suggestions and other substituent groups in planning and designing the city. In this research, it has been attempted to hold up educational sessions and workshops on urbanism for children to provide a suitable platform for their voluntary participation in the city of Sede Lenjan. In this way, children’s opinion, as the main involved group, can be investigated in friendly spaces and their suggestions and ideas can be adjusted properly to designers’ ideas. For this purpose, 128 children were trained and answered the distributed questionnaire. Findings of the research showed that the research process aimed at increasing children’s participation and creating a common language among them and other stakeholders and designers was efficient. It thus can be used very well in children’s participatory programs. Also, the findings of descriptive and inferential statistics (Pierson- Chi-squared) showed that children’s ideas had a huge difference with those other stakeholders and designers, emphasizing the necessity of using children’s active participation in the programs more than ever. The results of this research showed that seven steps should be considered in order to create a practical model of children participation: (1) researcher’s field studies; (2) publicizing and generalizing the research; (3) determining optimal sample among children; (4) teaching the participatory process and creating a common language with children; (5) survey of children to use their opinions in designing; (6) designing via the comments raised in the fifth step; (7) process modeling. The final results of data analysis revealed that what the designer group found by their presence in the city and discussing, observing and surveying the facilities, problems and design priorities was different with the reality of children’s life in the city because of children’s different understanding of their own unique needs and spaces. Also, city administrators, parents, residents and other social groups could not be a good substitute for children group, as their opinions had a huge difference with children’s opinions. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize a participatory process that considers direct viewpoints of children in designing child-friendly urban spaces.
