Urban Planning
Mohammad Reza YazdanPanah Shahabadi; Zeinab Adeli
Abstract
Highlights:
- There are distinct differences in the degree of place attachment across the scales of home, neighbourhood, and city.
- Place attachment is strongest at the scale of the home, followed by the city, and lastly, the neighbourhood.
- The factors shaping place attachment are tangible and ...
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Highlights:
- There are distinct differences in the degree of place attachment across the scales of home, neighbourhood, and city.
- Place attachment is strongest at the scale of the home, followed by the city, and lastly, the neighbourhood.
- The factors shaping place attachment are tangible and objective at the scale of the home, intangible and subjective at the scale of the city, and a combination of both at the neighbourhood scale.
Introduction:
Place attachment is an important concept for evaluating the spatial quality of environments, particularly due to its psychological dimension and its strong relationship to the broader concept of sense of place in urban spaces. While the subject has been extensively studied in various fields related to place, less attention has been given to how the scale of place—whether it is the home, neighbourhood, or city—affects the development of this attachment. This study aims to identify and explore the key factors influencing place attachment across these three scales. By understanding the differences in place attachment at varying levels, this research will contribute to a more nuanced approach in urban studies, planning, and design.
Theoretical Framework:
Recent models of place attachment emphasize that, in addition to personal and locational characteristics, both social and physical factors play a vital role in shaping the sense of attachment. The key factors influencing place attachment can be summarized as follows:
Physical Characteristics of a Place: These include elements that range from the smaller scale of the home and neighbourhood to larger urban and national contexts. This includes aspects such as housing satisfaction, the availability and efficiency of services, architectural and aesthetic values, and the sense of safety.
Individual Characteristics: Factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, homeownership, personal values, and community beliefs all significantly impact place attachment. Furthermore, experiences, memories, cultural background, and religion contribute to this connection.
Duration of Interaction with a Place: Research indicates that place attachment is a gradual process. Altman associates a stronger attachment with longer periods of residence, as this tends to result in the formation of deeper relationships and connections with the local community.
Social Characteristics: The development of place attachment also requires meaningful, long-term engagement and participation within the community. Social participation is seen as one of the strongest drivers of emotional attachment to a place, fostering a sense of security and belonging.
Methodology:
This research adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing in-depth interviews to explore the factors influencing place attachment across three scales—home, neighbourhood, and city. The interviews were conducted in six different neighbourhoods in Tehran, which were selected using a cluster sampling method. Two neighbourhoods were chosen from privileged areas (Darband and Jamaran), two from middle-income areas (Tarasht and West Tehran-Pars), and two from low-income areas (Bolur-Sazi and 13th Aban). The interviews were carried out until theoretical saturation was achieved, with a total of 66 interviews (27 men and 39 women) conducted. Each neighbourhood was represented by 11 interviews. The selected participants were individuals over the age of 25 who had lived in the same neighbourhood for at least five years.
Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Key concepts related to place attachment were extracted and categorized into factors influencing attachment at the scales of home, neighbourhood, and city.
Results and Discussion:
At the home scale, four major categories were identified:
- Housing structure
- Social belonging
- Environmental efficiency
- Semantic belonging
At the neighbourhood scale, the factors influencing place attachment included:
- Neighbourhood efficiency
- Sense of belonging
- Social capital
- Institutional-cognitive values
At the city scale, four categories emerged:
- Vitality
- Accessibility and efficiency
- Social dependence
- Perceptual-semantic value
The research revealed significant differences in place attachment across these scales. Place attachment is notably strongest at the home scale, followed by the city, with attachment to the neighbourhood being comparatively weaker. However, this does not minimize the importance of the neighbourhood in shaping place attachment. Further analysis showed that individuals with low attachment to their neighbourhood generally exhibited weak attachment to both the city and their home. This suggests that a certain minimum level of neighbourhood attachment is necessary for the formation of a more comprehensive sense of place attachment.
Moreover, the study highlighted differences in the nature of the factors influencing attachment at each scale. At the home level, factors are primarily tangible and objective—such as the physical structure of the house, its functionality, and the immediate social environment. In contrast, at the city scale, factors are more intangible and subjective, involving perceptions of the city's vitality, accessibility, and social dynamics. The neighbourhood scale represented a blend of both objective and subjective factors, reflecting its intermediary role in individuals' experiences of place.
Conclusion:
The findings of this research underscore the complexity of place attachment and its variation across different scales of place. While the home scale fosters the strongest attachment, followed by the city, the neighbourhood still plays a crucial role in shaping individuals' overall place attachment. The neighbourhood can act as a source of identity and attachment, although it requires further exploration to fully understand its dynamic relationship with other scales. Additionally, the concrete and objective factors that influence attachment at the home scale are contrasted with the more intangible, subjective elements at the city scale, while the neighbourhood embodies a hybrid of these characteristics. This nuanced understanding of place attachment and its relation to the scale of place offers valuable insights for urban planning and design, particularly in fostering environments that strengthen place attachment across all levels of urban life.
Urban Design
sara salehi; Hassan sajadzadeh; Mohammad Saied Izadi; kasra ketabollahi
Abstract
Highlights- The relationship between the city and the movies was addressed, and the cinematic sequences were evaluated.- Movie locations and the need to benefit from the diversity of urban spaces in Iran were addressed.- The streets of big cities in Iranian movies are places to pass through, not to attend.
Introduction
The ...
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Highlights- The relationship between the city and the movies was addressed, and the cinematic sequences were evaluated.- Movie locations and the need to benefit from the diversity of urban spaces in Iran were addressed.- The streets of big cities in Iranian movies are places to pass through, not to attend.
Introduction
The bond between the city and the movies is a two-way, strong one more than a century old. The movies has always been defined with respect to the city and urban spaces since the first days of its creation—late 19th century.
If the audience perceives urban spaces as having various functions and appropriate spatial qualities in the movie, the perception is associated with the real space and causes different feedbacks than those spaces in the long term.
Despite the increasing global desire to use the cinematic image of the city to achieve various layers of information, the Iranian movies still fails to present a correct image of the city. The beating heart of every city, urban spaces are still not used in the Iranian movies in the general sense.
While large, important cities such as Paris, London, New York, and Berlin are always in a two-way relationship with the movies and urban spaces, where the city and the various relevant issues are always exposed to cinematic representations as everyday, critical, or praiseworthy matters, reflection on such issues is still heretical in Iran. Especially, critical reflection about Tehran, as the main location in the Iranian movies, has not received much attention. A way to understand the urban space is to represent the city, urban spaces, and the complex, contradictory whole using the movies. Therefore, the main purposes of this research are to 1- examine the characteristics of different periods of the Iranian movies from the beginning of its formation to 2019, 2- examine different dimensions of selected works of the Iranian fiction movies after the Islamic Revolution of 1978, 3- extract urban space creation criteria in the fiction movies works, and 4- represent the image of a more human-oriented urban space in the Iranian movies. The latter suggestion is made because it is assumed that the Iranian cinematographer can achieve a dialectic of indicating the positive and negative aspects of the existing spaces in the country’s cities by using the correct criteria for representation of urban spaces in the movies, thereby nurturing informed, insistent viewers and causing active measures on the part of environmental designers to create more humane spaces.
Theoretical Framework
The final criteria were evaluated with the methods of analyzing the content, watching the movie, and surveying the city in the movie. Based on the conceptual model, the final criteria include the following in the order specified from the filmmaker’s point of view: the qualities of the urban space in the movie, diversity in the use of urban spaces, method of payment for the place, types of urban space, and types of character. The criterion of diversity in urban spaces, which concerns the use of these spaces in different parts of the city (not only in a specific region) with the urban surveying method in the movie, seeks the diversity of urban spaces presented in the city of Tehran in the fiction movies of choice produced after the revolution, and the final map is generated in the GIS software. 5 more criteria were examined first in the most important movies produced after the revolution with the method of content analysis and movie watching.
Methodology
In a comparative study, what can help the researcher to achieve his goal is greater emphasis on simultaneous analysis and examination of contrasts, as practiced in this research.
Findings and Discussion
All the above points indicate that the Iranian moviemaker still considers the city and its imposed modernity to be the source of many problems.
Another issue emphasized by Iranian moviemakers is to demonstrate the constant development of the city and its spaces regardless of the events of the story and peoples’ wishes. In some movies, no emphasis is placed on the urban space if actually depicted, and it is regarded simply as a background for the events of the story. All locations are focused on certain areas in Tehran and the like.
Conclusion
The results of the research demonstrate that we have not been very successful in creation of urban spaces in the past decades, and the few spaces that have been created and recreated have not been welcomed by cinematographers for various reasons. Moreover, the represented urban areas have been restricted to certain areas in Tehran, which has been subject to the conditions mentioned in the section on findings.
Furthermore, most of the selected movies in the fiction and urban fields were filmed in Tehran, and we are faced all around Iran with a pure centralism in terms of selection of the location of filming in urban spaces despite the availability of a variety thereof. This process should be corrected to address different aspects of various cities in Iran in fiction movies.
Urban Planning
Nikoo Medghalchi; Hossein Bahrainy; Mojtaba Rafieian
Abstract
Highlights
- The development of information and communication technology is an important change that causes paradigm shift in urbanism.
- The COVID pandemic emphasizes the importance of information and communication technology.
- This study seeks to trace urban studies on information and communication ...
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Highlights
- The development of information and communication technology is an important change that causes paradigm shift in urbanism.
- The COVID pandemic emphasizes the importance of information and communication technology.
- This study seeks to trace urban studies on information and communication technology and the COVID pandemic and provide appropriate data and knowledge for urban policy-making and future studies.
Introduction
The advent of the information age in the 20th century due to the great changes in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) has led to the prevailing approach to maximizing the solution of urban problems for advancing urban planners, designers, and policy-makers. The rate of growth and extensive development of urban studies has provided a wide range of interactions between its different sections. Coinciding with its growing trend, the corona virus has been spreading around the world since December 2019, re-examining the role of ICT.
Theoretical Framework
There is a lack of domestic research on ICT and the city. Given the existence of the gap and the importance of considering the area in urban studies, the purpose of this article is to identify, extract, and provide an interactive research space between the development of ICT and the subfields of urban studies in order to introduce and classify topics, approaches, methods, and results.
Methodology
Using the method of systematic review, the content of published foreign scientific research was reviewed and analyzed. This was carried out with a search for valid articles, a study of the abstracts and research results of more than 150 articles and their review, and a final selection of 93 articles after entering them into the Excel software environment.
Results and Discussion
The selected articles have been published in English in the period of 30 years between 1990 and 2020. Monitoring, examining, and extracting the key themes of the articles led us to 8 categories, including 1) urban policy, 2) electronic participation, 3) smart city, 4) city structure and spatial organization, 5) travel behavior, 6) digital gap, 7) public space, 8) and competitiveness, and 30 sub-themes. About 90% of the articles have been published in reputable scientific journals, and the rest appear in books and conference proceedings. An examination of the frequency of articles shows the growing worldwide trend in concern for this field in urban studies in recent years. According to the analysis made in the research, the use of ICT is applicable to planning theories at all levels, including the two levels of access and data processing and communication independent of time and place. These technologies enhance and promote the development of networks, social cohesion, and smart development of the city. The digital gap is intrinsically related to digital and urban inequalities. In network-oriented cities and societies, the issue of communication poverty is as important as traditional poverty. Many discussions have been raised by researchers on the impact of ICT on the structure and spatial organization of the city. Despite the initial premise of using the technology, which was to reduce concentration and increase urban dispersion, two more approaches, the centralization approach and the dual approach, have also been proposed in the field. The development of ICT has profound consequences on urban economic competitiveness. ICT is the basic driver for smartness in cities. A provider of access to the transfer of information and planning tools, granting the opportunity to share modes of transportation and work from a distance, the technology is of considerable importance for transportation systems. The relationship between the urban public space and technological developments and the development of ICT with the spread of the corona virus has been taken into consideration. Recent studies show that the spread of the corona virus has multiplied the use of ICT, which will definitely change the severity of its impact on the city and urban planning and design more rapidly. Therefore, this article is presented in order to explain the various dimensions of this issue.
Conclusion
Given the application of ICT in the field of urban planning, it is comprehensible that the creation of links with urban planning and design has proceeded slowly despite the increasing development of telecommunication technologies. It is necessary to consider the complex relationship between the city and ICT. On the one hand, the relationship has raised the challenge of polarization, inaccessibility, and urban injustice, and on the other hand, it has involved benefits such as increased participation and social networking, urban innovation and creativity, and urban sustainability and intelligence. In fact, it is necessary to fill the gap between ICT and urban planning. The central solution framework of the smart city is based on the city rather than intelligence. One of the most important challenges discussed in the previous studies is the issue of accessibility among different social classes. In spite of the initial hypothesis that the importance of place is reduced as that of distance decreases due to the development of ICT, place still matters. The point to be considered in regard to the relationship between the density and spread of the corona virus is the absence of a direct relationship between its population density and death. In fact, the ever-increasing development of ICT and the persistence of policies of closure and maintenance of social distancing during the pandemic are themselves factors effective in the development of digital facilities and technologies in the city. Urban spaces are changing and transforming due to the development of new technologies. In fact, the urban space paradigm established in 2020 promises the emergence of virtual open spaces. Future studies will be focused especially on an understanding of the shift towards the digital space and the emergence of a combination of the real space and the virtual space in developed countries. Moreover, it is necessary to know the social dimensions of urban spaces according to the conditions imposed by the corona virus in order to understand the type and method of changing the shape of the public space of the city and social interactions. Finally, the study and review of the valuable articles published in the area of the interface between the city and ICT has raised wide, diverse issues that require familiarity, mastery, and theoretical specialization besides their practical applications for policy-makers, planners, and urban designers and managers.
Acknowledgment
The Article has been derived from the Ph.D thesis entitled “The Impact of Information and Communication Technology and the covid Pandemic on Urban Studies: A Systematic Review”, which has been defended by first author under the second author`s supervision and the third author`s advisory at the Qazvin Branch Islamic Azad University.
