The Role of Environmental Quality in the Improvement of Social Interactions in Urban Streets: The Case of Imam Khomeini Street in Amol

Open urban spaces are the most important places for social interactions among citizens. They represent the civil life of a city and act as a place where the majority of social events take place. In many contemporary Iranian cities, however, urban spaces are viewed as places for passage and do not usually encourage people to deliberate and establish social relationships. Increasing overemphasis on speed, technology, and time has affected scales and caused the needs of pedestrians to be neglected. As a result, the deterioration of the quality of urban streets has reduced social interactions. A big challenge in the area of urban design is to improve the quality of urban life and social interactions. The present study therefore seeks to investigate the influence of environmental quality on the improvement of social interactions. For this purpose, the literature on the components of environmental quality in streets was reviewed and five of the most important components were selected. The selected components were used to develop a questionnaire which was given to 350 randomly selected subjects. The results were then analyzed in SPSS by means of inferential and descriptive statistical techniques such as t-test, one-way ANOVA, step-by-step regression, and Pearson test. Findings indicate that dynamicity, access, and comfort are the most influential components and identity has the lowest influence on the environmental quality and the attendance of citizens in the urban space of Imam Khomeini Street in the city of Amol.