Investigating the Mentality of Experts in the Integrative Spatial Quality in Rural Public Spaces

Several studies have been conducted on the formation of "spatial quality” in recent decades. But a tangible thing so far is the lack of attention to its holistic approach in the field of urban planning. The idea of "spatial quality" in rural areas, has raised a new thematic field. Therefore, despite the importance of spatial quality, in the literature on this issue at the level of public spaces, an efficient framework of factors has not been developed. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify criteria affecting it in order to evaluate the spatial quality in rural public spaces. This research has a mixed method (quantitative-qualitative) which is expeditionary in terms of the nature of the study and in terms of data collection is descriptive-survey. The study population is 48 experts who non-randomly filled a questionnaire obtained from the analysis of documentary content and the Delphi survey. The three dominant mental patterns for specialists are physical (aesthetic), functional and semantic, respectively. The highest percentage of variances is related to physical (aesthetic) mental pattern with 12.76%, which indicates the importance of this factor. The extracted factors of Delphi stages were analyzed using SPSS software through Q factor analysis and calculation of weighted mean and standard deviation. The results showed that criteria of spatial quality for experts in order of priority are: criteria of visual proportions (4.36), the highest weighted average and the most effective one is the integrated spatial quality of the public spaces of the village in the views of the experts.