Relationship between the perception of the quality of housing and residential environment and resident’s self-esteem of heterogeneous neighborhoods (case study: Hassan Abad-Zargandeh neighborhood of Tehran)

Diversity is an important part of a fair city development. But what happens in heterogeneous neighborhoods due to the proximity of different socioeconomic groups is social judgment and comparison based on objective aspects of individuals, this perception is based on assessment of neighbors which affect inhabitant’s self-esteem. The purpose of this study is investigating the effect of external perception of the residential environment quality in heterogeneous neighborhoods on residents' self-esteem.

The method is descriptive-analytic and attempts to finding the correlation between factors in the form of a model. So, two groups of 250 people with different socioeconomic class were selected randomly from the Hessenabad-Zargandeh heterogeneous neighborhood to judging the physical and human factors of the neighborhoods. Using path analysis and regression, direct and indirect effects of variables on resident’s self-esteem were investigated.

The results show that in lower-socio-economic neighborhoods, the external perception of the integrity and social status of residents, the characteristics of passage and open space, and the green private housing, with mediators determining the public and social self-esteem of residents Is. But in neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic levels, external perception of access to facilities and services, facade of the building, perceptual density and voice conditions with mediators affects the public and social self-esteem of the residents.

Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to these physical and human factors when planning and developing heterogeneous neighborhoods for the mental health of the inhabitants, because external judgments are made accordingly and effect their social contact.