Urban Planning
Mohanna Sarvari; Nina Khalighi; Mehdi Saidi
Abstract
Highlights
This research introduces the innovative Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI), which uniquely evaluates both physical infrastructure and women’s perceived experiences to understand their presence in urban parks.
The findings reveal that improving park infrastructure alone is insufficient ...
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Highlights
This research introduces the innovative Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI), which uniquely evaluates both physical infrastructure and women’s perceived experiences to understand their presence in urban parks.
The findings reveal that improving park infrastructure alone is insufficient to achieve gender equity, as social, cultural, and economic factors play decisive roles.
A significant gap exists between the provision of physical lighting and women’s perceived sense of safety, primarily due to the lack of effective social surveillance mechanisms.
The study highlights the need for a multidimensional approach that integrates physical design with social, cultural, and economic planning to create inclusive and welcoming urban public spaces for women.
Introduction
International frameworks and theories, including Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space and the concept of the embodiment of space, emphasize that space is socially produced through human interactions. When urban planning fails to address women’s needs, their lived experience of space becomes constrained by insecurity, limited accessibility, and reduced opportunities for participation. In Iranian cities, the dominance of conventional planning approaches has resulted in public spaces that inadequately respond to women’s requirements for safety, accessibility, and comfort.
Previous studies have identified security, activity diversity, and individual characteristics—such as age and marital status—as key determinants of women’s presence in public spaces. Weak security, cultural constraints, and the lack of gender-responsive public services have further reduced women’s participation in urban spaces and intensified spatial inequality. Focusing on Shohada Park in Sanandaj, this study demonstrates that inadequate lighting, insufficient urban furniture, and limited public services have contributed to women’s lower presence despite their substantial share of the city’s population.
Theoretical Framework
This study develops a theoretical framework to examine the factors shaping women’s preferences in urban parks and to evaluate park planning quality from a gender-responsive perspective. The framework draws upon studies of urban parks, women-centered planning, public participation, and women’s use of public spaces.
It assumes that women’s experiences of urban parks are multidimensional and influenced by the interaction of physical, social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors. Accordingly, park quality is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct that reflects both objective physical conditions and women’s subjective experiences. The framework is operationalized through measurable indicators to support practical and gender-responsive urban park planning.
A theoretical framework for analyzing women’s preferences and evaluating park planning quality.
Grounded in the literature on urban parks, women-centered planning, public participation, and women’s use of public spaces.
Women’s experiences are shaped by physical, social, cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions.
Park quality incorporates both objective characteristics and subjective perceptions.
The framework is translated into measurable indicators for practical planning applications.
Methodology
This applied study adopts a mixed-methods (qualitative–quantitative) approach to develop and evaluate the Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI) across five dimensions. Qualitative data were first used to identify the relevant indicators, which were subsequently tested and quantified through quantitative analysis.
Applied research using a mixed-methods approach.
Development and measurement of the Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI) across five dimensions: physical, social, economic, cultural, and environmental.
Study population: women aged over 20 years in Sanandaj (population: 148,920; 2016 Census).
Shohada Park was selected as the case study because of its importance as a major urban public space.
Results and Discussion
The findings indicate that women’s presence in Shohada Park is influenced by the combined effects of physical, social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors rather than by physical conditions alone.
The principal innovation of this study is the development of the Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI), which simultaneously evaluates objective park infrastructure and women’s subjective experiences. The results demonstrate that physical improvements alone cannot achieve gender equity in urban public spaces. Instead, social cohesion, cultural acceptance, economic opportunities, and environmental quality are equally important in shaping women’s experiences and encouraging their presence.
Conclusion
The findings demonstrate that increasing women’s presence in urban parks requires more than physical improvements. A multidimensional approach that simultaneously addresses social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors is essential for creating equitable and inclusive public spaces.
The study introduces the Gender Equity Experience Index (GEPI) as a practical, policy-oriented tool for evaluating public spaces from a gender equity perspective through the integration of qualitative and quantitative evidence.
The results also highlight several planning priorities, including improving restroom facilities, providing multipurpose public spaces, expanding cultural programs, strengthening affordable commercial services, enhancing children’s play facilities and urban furniture, and increasing both actual and perceived safety through improved lighting and social surveillance.
By incorporating economic and cultural dimensions within a mixed-methods framework, the study provides a more comprehensive understanding of women’s experiences in urban public spaces. Nevertheless, the research is limited by its focus on a single park and its cross-sectional design. Future studies should employ comparative and longitudinal approaches to validate and expand the proposed framework across different urban contexts.
Ultimately, achieving safe, inclusive, and gender-responsive urban spaces requires a fundamental reconsideration of conventional urban planning approaches.
Acknowledgment
This article is derived from a Master’s thesis in Urban Planning titled 'Planning Urban Parks Based on the Needs and Preferences of Women: A Case Study of Shohada Park, Sanandaj,' presented at the University of Kurdistan by the first author, supervised by the second author and consulted by the third author.
Urban Scape
soudabeh gholipour; Jamaloddin Mahdinezhad; Bahram Saleh Sedghpour
Abstract
Highlights
Relevant key issues were extracted form users’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire and their application to a closed-ended questionnaire.
The environmental variables affecting the security of urban public spaces were documented and summarized.
The factors and criteria effective ...
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Highlights
Relevant key issues were extracted form users’ responses to an open-ended questionnaire and their application to a closed-ended questionnaire.
The environmental variables affecting the security of urban public spaces were documented and summarized.
The factors and criteria effective on users’ sense of security were extracted using exploratory factor analysis.
Introduction
One of the most important components of environmental quality, environmental security plays an important role in the use of urban spaces. In fact, the feeling of fear and lack of security in urban environments, including parks, has turned into a problem in today’s societies. Parks are areas in cities where any citizen can spend their leisure time and enjoy park-based recreational activities. Many factors affecting the security of urban parks can be attributed to their design and physical conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to identify these factors and provide appropriate solutions to improve their conditions. Since an urban park needs a conscious design that provides the users’ satisfaction, it is necessary to consider their characteristics, which can be achieved through their participation.
Theoretical Framework
To explain the theoretical concept of security, two distinct dimensions are mentioned. The first is the objective dimension, which is evaluated using objective environmental and behavioral parameters, and the second is the mental dimension, which is understood based on the security of the community. Both dimensions can have a positive or negative effect on the other. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the two dimensions together in order to improve public security.
Methodology
Since a comprehensive questionnaire was not found to measure the security of urban parks based on users’ preferences, a researcher-made questionnaire was prepared, and its validity and reliability were verified. The research method was qualitative and qualitative-quantitative. In the first step, the qualitative research method was used based on content analysis, and the questions of the open-ended questionnaire were implemented in textual form based on the contents of the experts’ statements. The components were obtained from content analyses of users’ responses to the semi-structured open-ended questionnaire, and the closed-ended questionnaire was developed on that basis. The final questionnaire was designed as a closed-ended one to quantify the variables faster and be capable of running on a larger scale. The questions had the structure of a four-point Likert scale, with the answers ranging from strong disagreement to strong agreement. The questionnaire was distributed among 250 visitors of Mellat Park, Tehran. Since the differences in the environmental, socio-economic, and physical characteristics of different places can give different senses of security or fear to citizens, a major park in Tehran (Mellat Park) was chosen for a case study. It extends over an area of about 34 hectares in Municipal District 3. The purpose of this study was to construct, normalize, and validate a security scale for urban parks from the users’ perspective.
Results and Discussion
Content validity was verified through preliminary implementation, open interviews with users, and expert approval. In the preliminary step, reliability was measured using the internal coordination of the questions with Cronbach’s alpha. The final questionnaire was distributed among 250 park visitors. The results indicated that the questionnaire was valid and standard, and eight explanatory factors were obtained from the users’ preferences as the data obtained in SPSS 22 were analyzed using the exploratory factor analysis technique. These included artificial element design, control and surveillance, plant design, readability, physical accessibility, aesthetics, activity patterns, and space size and extent. From the users’ point of view, artificial element design was the most significant factor, followed by control and surveillance, plant design, readability, and physical accessibility, and aesthetics, activity patterns, and space size and extent were ranked next.
Conclusion
Understanding users’ perceptions of landscape design methods and considering their preferences and desires helps landscape designers with their jobs. It can be considered as a topic for future research how each of the obtained components can induce a feeling of fear or security in urban park users. Examples include specification of the relationship between vegetation or readability and the feeling of fear or the standard for each of the service elements, pieces of furniture, etc. Through presentation of a model, the hidden relationships between factors can be achieved, and a theoretical pattern composed of many different components can be examined both entirely and partially. Of course, it should be noted that none of these factors alone induces fear or security; rather, there are a number of factors that contribute to a complex interaction, such as personal characteristics (age, gender, etc.) and social characteristics (familiarity with the environment, solitary presence, frequency of presence, etc.), which can be investigated in future research.
Acknowledgment
This article was extracted from Soudabeh Gholipouri’s doctoral thesis, entitled Modeling the environmental security in urban parks based on users’ preferences, developed under the supervision of Dr. Jamal-e-Din MahdiNejad and advisory of Dr. Bahram Saleh Sedghpour at Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University.
Urban Design
Abstract
The public spaces of city shape social flows, provide the material needs of citizens, their intrinsic need for communication and face-to-face social interactions. Therefore, the quality of urban spaces in the formation of social interactions, the mental image of the city and its visualization are important. ...
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The public spaces of city shape social flows, provide the material needs of citizens, their intrinsic need for communication and face-to-face social interactions. Therefore, the quality of urban spaces in the formation of social interactions, the mental image of the city and its visualization are important. Several factors play a role in the formulation of the concept of quality, the most important of which is the configuration of urban spaces. The spatial configuration organizes the relationships between urban spaces. It is a factor in shaping qualitative variables such as readability and accessibility. Parks are one of the urban spaces whose social performance and productivity are directly affected by spatial quality. However, urban parks are now the epicenter of most social anomalies due to different factors and, as public spaces, are less able to provide a suitable environment for the formation of social interactions. In recent decades, the theory of space layout has made it possible to analyze the spatial configuration and its relationship with social, economic and physical factors using spatial variables.The present study investigates the structure and analyzes the features of spatial configuration of Mashhad in order to examine its effects on the spatial quality of urban parks. Configuration analysis provides an appropriate assessment of the spatial distribution, accessibility, security and readability of urban parks and can play an important role in redefining the quality of urban parks spatially. Since parks play an important role in urban spaces, evaluation of the layout, spatial distribution and access to urban parks in Mashhad are among the most important goals of the study. In addition, the readability and security of Mashhad parks are other parameters that are studied in this study using the space-layout theory variables. The present research is an applied research with a descriptive-analytical method. The statistical sample involves 290 parks in Mashhad in the five categories of neighborhood, local, district, region, and city. The research was conducted using spatial variables of space layout. The theoretical framework of the research was developed based on documentary and library studies with the aim of explaining the dimensions of spatial quality. Also, the city’s statistics in 2014, land use maps of 2011 (1/200 scale), satellite images and field surveys were used to analyze the data and collect information about the urban parks in Mashhad. The analyses were conducted in the GIS environment and 10 UCL Depthmap based on Mashhad’s axial map. The basic variables in this study were connectivity, interconnection, and control. The intermediate variables were readability, accessibility, space security, and cohesion. Research results show that despite the large dispersion of parks in the city, there is a spatial logic between the performance of parks and the city’s configuration. While regional parks are expected to be more readable in the structure and configuration of the city of Mashhad than district parks, the analyses show that they are less visible and accessible than other parks. The spatial distribution of these parks and their placement in spaces with a greater depth has decreased their spatial quality. Thus, one cannot expect significant functional and social effectiveness from this category of parks. In terms of spatial quality, urban parks are perhaps the only form of urban and social spaces that have the greatest impact on the spatial configuration of city due to their type of performance. The results of this study show that the distribution of urban parks in Mashhad is less spatially hierarchical. Although the main parks are distributed on a city scale in accordance with the axes of association and readability, most regional and district parks do not have such a distribution. This feature also affects the spatial cohesion of urban parks in relation to the structure of Mashhad and reduces the quality of space. Finally, it can be of said that, regardless of the spatial cohesion of Mashhad, which has a weak correlation with the components of the urban space and the city as whole, all the research indicators related to the quality of parks in Mashhad are poor and weak. This necessitates the attention to the park’s functional scale in the planning process, the proper location of urban parks, and the proper design according to the urban spatial pattern. Also, an assessment of the category of parks found that despite the number of neighborhood and local parks, these types of parks are better in terms of control than other parks, which seem to be logical according to the functional radius on a local scale. However, urban parks are of great importance in terms of accessibility and readability in the current structure of Mashhad. It seems that the assessment of spatial quality and its relationship with function can have an effective role in the planning and design of urban parks.
