Towards a Comprehensive Process of Public Spaces Quality Assessment in Iranian Cities

The studies on measuring the quality of public space in Iran and the world literature show a kind of standardization in the use of quality measurement criteria.While the concept of the quality of public space could be perceived differently,concerning space type and the political-economic-social background of the formation and evolution of public space can provide a different understanding.It seems that in assessing the quality of public space,the focus is mostly on quantitative and statistical methods,and understanding the nature of space has not played a significant role in measuring quality.This research provides a new path to measuring the quality of public space based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

Haft-Hoz square has been selected as the research study to validate the proposed process. The combination of content analysis, historical-interpretative method, in-depth interviews and compilation of oral memories, behavioral analysis, and correlation analysis have been used in this research.

This research presents a new methodology based on seven steps, including:identifying quality criteria based on international literature,identifying quality criteria tested Iranian literature on public spaces,combining the criteria of the first and second steps, and validating the possibility of evaluating the selected criteria based on field study,a historical-interpretative study of the transformation of the form of public space in different historical periods,conducting behavioral studies based on Jan Gol's method,conducting in-depth interviews with users who have a long history of using the space to extract oral memories and identify the most critical space quality measures over time and quantitative analysis reveals the correlations of quality measures.

Providing a comprehensive methodology in evaluating the quality of urban public spaces is the most important result of this research.