Document Type : Research Paper
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Abstract
The central historic area of the city has the highest social, economic, cultural and religious interactions. Over time, with the development of the city and the growing use of cars in urban areas, problems have emerged in pedestrian and driver circulation systems. In this regard, New Urbanism movement is the answer to suburban sprawl and inner – city decline. Based on new urbanism principles, street network connectivity is a key characteristic of a sustainable street network. The objective of this research is to develop a method for understanding and analyzing the structure of street networks with the connectivity principle of New Urbanism movement and the use of Space Syntax method. For the analysis, GIS software was used. In this research, central historic area of the city of Kashmar was selected as a case study. Over time, traffic problems in pedestrian and driver circulation systems in this area have emerged leading to congestion and disorder on city streets at peak hours. Spatial structure and street network of the city was identified and analyzed with space syntax technique. The results indicate that the inner neighborhoods of the central historic area of Kashmar, despite their proximity to the most integrated and accessible streets, has failed to connect with the new structure of the city. In other words, the connectivity of local streets with the entire street network in central neighborhoods is low and accessibility and permeability into central historic neighborhood of the city is not easy. Moreover, based on new urbanism approach and previous research, a wide range of measures of street network connectivity is defined and described. Evaluating street network connectivity of the study area of Kashmar indicates that connectivity is relatively good but driver connectivity is lower. A comparative analysis of connectivity results based on the results of space syntax technique on the one hand and local field observations on the other show that considering street network as the entire spatial structure of the city using the space syntax technique will produce results closer to reality. In other words, it is important to consider the old and historical areas with the entire urban system. Finally, in regards to the traffic problems in the central area of Kashmar, we can conclude that connectivity is only one factor affecting network performance and efficiency for pedestrians and drivers; other factors such as promoting walking are also effective and should be incorporated into the quantitative measures of connectivity.
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