Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
In recent decades the issues of urban quality of life and the promotion of citizens’ satisfaction in regards to their living environment have attracted the attention of many researchers and international organizations as high as the United Nation which releases an annual report entitled “Human Report”. This report illustrates the differences between cities in terms of level of quality of life. Quality of life is measured by various factors and one of the most important measures of quality of life is physical security which if paid attention to reduces problems such as the devastating effects of natural disasters, lack of sense of relief in urban spaces and so forth. The aim of this study is to assess the quality of life based on standards of quality of life and quality of physical security in settlements. The standards of quality of life and physical security in both objective and subjective aspects in the ancient city of Urmia was evaluated and investigated as a case study. The method used in this paper is survey-analysis. The investigation was carried out using questionnaires, AHP (AHP) model and Fuzzy Techniques, linear regression and Pearson correlation analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. By using library resources and research undertaken on the subject, this research determined indicators of physical quality and security including access to housing facilities, infrastructure and home ownership conditions. In order to achieve the goal of study, the hypothesis “it seems that improvement in the quality of life and physical security in the old city of Urmia can result in the satisfaction of its citizens” was introduced. To analyze the data and verify the hypothesis, the indicator index was first calculated. In order to analyze the objective data, off-scaling phase was used and the degree of membership of variable indicators studied for each housing unit was obtained. Finally, by combining the coefficients of the variables and the degree of membership variables, objective life quality final score (a measure of security and physical quality) per dwelling unit was attained. In the next section, subjective survey data was examined. By combining the coefficients and parameters of the obtained scores of Likert scale questionnaire, subjective quality of life in the final score was calculated for each residential unit. To assess the relationship between physical quality and physical security with mental quality of life, the standards of security and physical quality as independent parameters was introduced. The combination of responses from citizens were introduced as dependent variables. By testing the hypothesis and obtaining a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.984 and coefficient of determination of 0.969 showed that there is a very strong correlation between urban life quality index and physical security in the old city of Urmia. The results show that satisfaction in access to services statistically has a significant positive effect on subjective quality of life and resident satisfaction from the variables of quality of life and physical security leads to greater increase in satisfaction of the subjective quality of life. These findings remind urban planners that physical parameters have a great role in increasing satisfaction of quality of life of citizens.
Keywords
- quality of life
- Subjective Indicators
- Objective Indicators
- physical quality and safety
- historical texture of URMIA
Main Subjects
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