novin tavallaei

Living closer to nature has emerged as a lifestyle for people who intend to move away from populated and compact urban areas. Residents of populated cities are interested in spending some of their time in second homes in areas with limited noise disturbance and beautiful natural landscapes to escape the urban pollution and unrest, as well as to find places for recreation. The purpose of this study is to identify the impacts of second homes on the social and economic sustainability of the cities in the coastal area of Mazandaran province, including Babolsar, Chalus and Nur. The diverse natural capacities of the northern region in terms of existence of sea, forest, mountains, having a variety of leisure facilities such as water recreation, forestry, mountain climbing, and, the accessibility of northern cities from different part of the country through scenic drives, make these cities more attractive for owning a second home. Following this increasing demand, the abundant constructions of second homes led to significant impacts on spatial and socio-economic dimensions of these cities, including urban sprawl, rising property prices, housing shortages for local people, emerging vacant houses for most of the year, visual degradation of residential patterns as a result of prevailing non-local types of architecture, rapid conversion of agricultural land use to non-productive uses, socio-economic inequalities, and cultural conflicts between local and non-local inhabitants. These were part of the problems which address a specific research question in this article: What is the impact of second homes on the social and economic sustainability of the coastal cities of Mazandaran? Social sustainability refers to the protection and improvement of the well-being of the future and present generations and includes principles such as justice, social inclusion and interactions, security, democracy, social cohesion and communication, and quality of life. Economic sustainability means strengthening the foundations of the economy and achieving economic security in terms of access to sustainable livelihoods, stable conditions of occupations, employment as well as reliable financial resources, and finally, appropriate and environmentally friendly technology with the use of human resources. In this article, the impact of second homes on social sustainability was studied by measuring the variables of "participation", "security" and "quality of life". To measure these impacts on economic sustainability, "economic welfare" and "economic growth" were evaluated. In addition to documentary studies, secondary data analysis and observation, data was mainly collected via systematic questionnaires completed by 381 samples drawn randomly from the population of the selected cities. The findings shows that with the emergence of second homes in these cities, the level of social sustainability decreased significantly; however, economic sustainability was improved in terms of "economic growth" and decreased considering "economic welfare". In conclusion, urban rules and regulations are required to organize the rise in demand for second homes in Mazandaran coastal areas to protect socio-economic sustainability.

Research Problem:

 The natural structures within the city improve the quality of them, from ecological and aesthetic aspects to social values and additionally, they are very important for the sustainability of the city. Therefore, the riverside of Babolrood in Babolsar due to the creation of a suitable space despite the greenery, river, recreational and commercial centers and the presence of vendors, takes the attention of residents, students, pedestrians, and even travelers are drawn to perform various leisure activities. One of the most important issues in this area is the inflexibility of the space, which disrupts activities and, as a result, leads to different, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory behaviors that are happened by users. Despite the high potential, this area is more in the form of a passage where most of its users are just moving aimlessly in various forms, and if there is a stop, it is just a short sitting to relieve fatigue.

The main questions of the current study are:1- How can we utilize the behavioral patterns in environmental design?2- Which characteristic of architectural design should be considered in the riverside of Babolrood so that the existing space meets the user’s behavioral patterns?

The research method of the current study is divided into three stages. In the first stage, the exploratory observation was used to obtain preliminary information; then, in the second stage, the behavioral study was performed in the are for 48 days (4 days in each month for one year) on Saturdays, Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. In the third stage, simultaneously with the observations using interviews, to reach a direct relationship with the audience. Notwithstanding the data collection, process was performed without intermediaries; the information was analyzed through qualitative content analysis.In order to achieve to this stage, firstly the behavior's frequency that is less than the one percent of the total cases, which means 400 observation cases, was not considered. In another word, the behaviors with the minimum numbers of 400 considered as repetitive behavior, and behaviors with less repetition than 400 are neglected. The next step belonged to behavioral plans. Due to reach clear behavioral plans, all behaviors for both genders (except children) were marked on happening location. The schematic behavioral patterns extracted which demonstrate the most compressed area in which repetitive behaviors happened.

The results of this study show that the available spaces are not used as predicted, behaviors do not occur in the predicted spaces, small activities, and dens of them at one point play a major and decisive role in deviation. Pedestrians deviate and will not use the routes if they do not have sufficient security and social monitoring. Finally, the information extracted from the data, including component, item, purpose, characteristics of behaviors, and spatial requirements, represented as a conclusion.

The urban environment can simultaneously form the users’ behaviors and also can be adaptable by users’ behaviors, therefore creating spaces based on the desires as well as needs of users seems necessary in order to create a lively and dynamic urban space due to achieving to the maximum of residents’ satisfaction. Accordingly, this study has tried to investigate the preferences of users of an urban space and based on gained data from users’ experiences, makes an effort to achieve to a desirable space that is parallel with the demands and needs of users. The field study of this research is included two main stages: the first stage is conducted by an observational study. In the second stage, an interview was conducted with users in the form of a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of a combination of survey, scoring, prioritization, and explanatory questions. The final number of questionnaires was 324. In addition, an attempt was made to collect all the information extracted from the questionnaires in the form of simple and legible tables as the main interview data. The analysis are conducted by utilizing the qualitative content analysis also in some cases, the categorization of items and data was used. As a result, the most important items that cause user dissatisfaction were classified into three components: interference, disturbance, and noise (noise pollution), and finally, these items and components are a subset of Categories that affect users' environmental preferences include privacy, safety, security, noise pollution, spatial hierarchy, and pedestrianism, and suggestions have been presented to improve them. Also, using the Uman-Whitney test, it was found that the lighting system of the area was not appropriate at night, while users were satisfied with the amount of urban furniture. Adequacy of rest spaces is also one of the demands of users in the area.

Neighborhood relationships are regarded as declining social relations among citizens in metropolitan areas. In this research first the neighborhood relations were studied, then the hypothesis of weak relations of neighborhood residents were estimated in Tehran. The factors influenced the variables were investigated according to available theories and approaches. The study considered three viewpoints: Determinism theory, Compositional theory and Subculture theory. Neighborhood relations were explained regarding to two main components of social capital: social trust and social participation as well as the existence and use of public spaces. The data-gathering was conducted through 9 districts from down, center and up areas in Tehran by interviewing 270 respondents. The findings showed that the female and married respondents have a stronger tie to neighborhood relations than the male and married ones. Also, the variables of age, length of residency, type of housing ownership, level of neighbor satisfaction, social participation, interpersonal trust, beliefs on neighbors, place belonging and the use of public spaces have a positive effect on neighborhood relations. On the contrary, the variables of employment, membership in secondary groups, population density and size of neighborhood units, relocation, rationalization, and complex division of labor were in negative relations to neighborhood relationships. As a result, by recognizing the impact of these factors, the way can be paved to prevent the reduction of face-to-face relationships with the neighbors, who are in the adjacent social network outside their homes, and neighborhood relationships can be turned into a social asset. Social participation as a systematic process, in which the people involve consciously and collectively with considering certain objectives, and share the power resources, was found as the most effective factor on the continuity of neighborhood relationships.

The first criterion of judgment about city is quality of their public spaces. Therefore, understanding and conception of their users is important. The public spaces are important part of cities because of more interactions between people occurs in there and it consistent of parts that people have physical and visual access to them. There are great indices to measure the quality of urban public spaces. Project of public spaces (PPS) is a non-profit organization that its purpose is planning and programming to create and maintain the public spaces and to construct cities with appropriate structure. According to this, it can evaluate a place to four criteria: sociability, availability and integration, use and activities and finally, comfort and perspective. The present paper seeks to measure the desirability of the urban public spaces from perspective of young people toward it. In this research, the methodology was survey and questionnaire as instrument for data collection was used. Multistage cluster sampling was sampling method. A sample of 376 young people between the ages of 29- 15 years was determined according to the last census in Ghaemshahr. The analysis of information did by SPSS. The results showed that sociability, the availability and integration, user, activities and finally perspective evaluated in moderate level by young people. There were significant differences between respondents to assessment of desirability of space by gender. In fact, female have more negative perspective toward desirability of urban public space.