Urban Architecture
Mitra Ghafourian; Elham Hesari
Volume 5, Issue 18 , May 2016, , Pages 91-100
Abstract
Residential Satisfaction is one of the most complex issues and the key criterion which has been studied by many urban scholars and also other scientific researchers. It is necessary since it contributes to individuals’ well-being and quality of life. Admittedly, the Residential Satisfaction concept ...
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Residential Satisfaction is one of the most complex issues and the key criterion which has been studied by many urban scholars and also other scientific researchers. It is necessary since it contributes to individuals’ well-being and quality of life. Admittedly, the Residential Satisfaction concept is based on a wide range of expectations, desires and tendencies in order to meet basic and transcendental human needs, and refers to the real experience of people's lives. Satisfaction with the residential environment is, in fact, people's quality of evaluating their living environment and many factors such as personal, physical and social factors influence its level. Hence, evaluation of these factors leading to satisfaction with the residential environment can be used as scales and standards by the city planners, urbanists and architects. It seems that by reviewing the research conducted on residents' satisfaction and its inductive conclusion, one can reach a systematic framework and a comprehensive model to explain the factors affecting this quality. This paper is in search of a theoretical framework to identify and assess background factors and variables affecting residential satisfaction, and to develop a theoretical model to analyze the relationship of each variable with the extent of residents’ satisfaction using a meta-analysis method by comparing the results of previous experimental research. This analysis was undertaken to achieve tangible and clear conclusions. Accordingly, on the one hand it deals with defining satisfaction with the residential area based on the views of experts in the field; and on the other hand, by looking at previous experimental studies, it deals with identifying and analyzing the factors affecting the satisfaction of the residents and offers the proposed model of the research. The results of the research identify that Satisfaction with residential space is a complex phenomenon and depends on multiple factors which includes personal, social and physical factors. Personal variables, independently, are known as the most influential factors affecting different levels of expectations, desires and tendencies of life. Social factors were identified and defined as emotions that are effective in the process of shaping the social dimension of satisfaction. It can be stated that the public's sense toward local community increases in places and is affected by people’s mental perception of the environment. in fact, people feel more satisfied with their local community when it seems supportive, reliable and friendly. The third level of commonality also showed that satisfaction is also influenced by the living conditions and physical environmental factors. If built environment was selected by people and it has a good quality, it will affect judgment of satisfaction of the residential environment. In addition, social and physical factors of residential environments form the real experiences of people from these environments. With respect to the objective of observing the physical environment and mental perception of the social conditions in which one lives, residents will have different actual experience in terms of the environment. Thus, if there is more convergence between individuals' expectations with their real experience of the environment, the satisfaction with the residential environment will increase.
Satisfaction, Residential Environment, Personal Factors, Social Factors, Physical Factors.
Urban Planning
negin mozafari; bita latifi; naser barakpour
Volume 5, Issue 17 , February 2016, , Pages 77-92
Abstract
Residential satisfaction has been a major and popular research topic for the following reasons. First, individual's evaluations of housing and neighborhoods determine the way they respond to residential environment and form the basis for public policy feedback. Second, residential satisfaction is recognized ...
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Residential satisfaction has been a major and popular research topic for the following reasons. First, individual's evaluations of housing and neighborhoods determine the way they respond to residential environment and form the basis for public policy feedback. Second, residential satisfaction is recognized as important components of an individual's quality of life. Furthermore, high satisfaction among residents encourages them to stay on and induces others to move in, and low satisfaction with the neighborhood environment urges current residents to move out.
On the other hand, although physical characteristics of housing units are known to be very effective in the residential satisfaction rating by many scholars, it should be noted that the dwelling unit itself is not the only factor of satisfaction but it is only a subsystem of the whole residential livability system. In this sense, humans interact with multiple components in their living environment, and continuously influence the environment and are affected by it. This interaction alters an individual’s feeling toward their residential environment. thus, this interaction can be examined in the form of a system that includes residential units, neighborhood and neighbors. In regards to neighborhood satisfaction, although some researches find that the physical characteristics are the most important factors and planners support the importance of physical characteristics, residents consider social factors more important in judging a neighborhood. The current study assesses the level of residential satisfaction in two neighborhoods of Tehran and compares them to create a basis for evaluating urban policies and decisions in recent years and shows the effectiveness of different factors on the satisfaction of residents of different neighborhoods by comparing them. For this purpose, the operating model to measure satisfaction was derived by examining studies of different researchers in the form of approaches (including the belief-affect approach, the commitment approach and the availability approach), factors (individual's characteristics, characteristics of residential environment, feeling and perception of residents etc.) and models (Amerigo model, comparing the level of satisfaction in culturally homogeneous and heterogeneous neighborhoods model etc.). In the proposed model, attention has been paid to all three levels of person, dwelling unit and residential environment and factors which affect satisfaction have been classified under five categories: objective criteria related to the individual, objective criteria related to the environment, objective criteria related to the dwelling unit, subjective criteria related to the individual and subjective criteria related to the environment through a survey questionnaire. Satisfaction levels of residents of neighborhood 1 (located in region three of Tehran municipality) and residents of neighborhood 2 (located in region 11 of Tehran municipality) were compared with each other. A total of 100 questionnaires were completed for each neighborhood. Findings of the study show that the highest and lowest satisfaction in neighborhood 1 were linked to the objective criteria related to the dwelling unit and objective criteria related to the environment and in neighborhood 2, to subjective criteria related to the environment and subjective criteria related to the individual. Overall satisfaction in neighborhood 1 (between moderate and satisfied) was higher than neighborhood 2 (between dissatisfied and moderate).
