نشریه دانش شهرسازی
سال دوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 3، تابستان 1397)

Urban livability reflects an influential discourse in urban development and urban planning and has recently received due attention because of paying increasing attention to urban life quality. The purpose of this study was the evaluation of urban livability indicators in Ahvaz city from its residents’ perspective. This research is an applied one in terms of its purpose and of descriptive-survey type in terms of its method. Based on multi-stage cluster sampling, eight neighborhoods out of eight districts were selected. Using Cochran formula, the sample size was estimated to be 384 and its ratio in each neighborhood was determined. In this study, questionnaire was used as the data elicitation technique. To investigate urban livability, nine indicators (security, education, leisure, participation, attachment to place, income and employment, infrastructure facilities and services, transportation and pollution) with 43 items were used. Shannon entropy method and Copras technique were utilized to weigh the indicators and rank the neighborhoods in terms of urban livability indicators, respectively. In this study, two indicators, namely pollution and security, were considered as negative indicators. The results indicated that the status of urban livability indicators in the districts under study was inappropriate. The results of using Shannon entropy method and Copras technique also showed that Kianpars neighborhood ranked first followed by Zeitoon Karmandi, South Golestan, Khorousi, Pardis 1, Akhar Asphalt, Shalang Abad neighborhoods. Manba Ab neighborhood ranked last and had the worst status in this regard.

Over the past few decades, numerous articles and scientific books have been published on the theoretical foundations of urban design. However, in reality, ‘the quality of urban spaces’ as the most important concern of this field and profession has not yet been put into practice in many cities and especially in our country. Operationalization of urban design knowledge is feasible through the formulation and preparation of frameworks, requirements, and indicators in the legal texts of the country as upstream documents and development guidance programs. In order to investigate the status of ‘urban design’ in Iran's urban planning laws, this paper analyzes the content of the decisions made by the Supreme Council of Urbanism and Architecture of Iran from 1964 to 2016. To this aim, the most important ‘themes’ and ‘positions’ of urban design that were mentioned or emphasized in the council's resolutions were considered. For this purpose, the text of the decisions made during the mentioned period was first carefully read. Using an interpretive-analytical approach and the qualitative content analysis method, the decisions that were somewhat related to urban design issues were extracted and then the content related to urban design was examined in these 87 drafts. Analysis of the data indicates that while the smallest attention was paid to urban design in the decisions of the council (less than 5%), the highest degree of emphasis was on ‘designing zones and axes for the development of tourism’ and ‘attention to the textures and monuments’ with 7.48% and ‘urban landscape design’ with 6.95%, respectively. Among the positions, the surrounding areas of ‘monuments and memorials’ with 19.81% and ‘historical textures’ with 16.03% have received further attention compared to other urban positions in the council's resolutions. In sum, this study is indicative of a small share of attention paid to ‘urban design’ and ‘relevant documents’ in the decisions made by the Iran’s Supreme Council for Urbanism and Architecture.

Housing has various aspects whose formation is a reflection of various social, economic, cultural, ideological, and environmental conditions. Due to the changes that take place in these conditions, modernity has changed all aspects of life including living area and has transformed the spatial structure of city and the concept of housing and home. Ignoring the effects of modernity on housing architecture leads to uncertainty in planning for urban life. In this regard, residential complexes are the result of economic, political, social, and cultural developments that are triggered by modernity. In Tabriz city, this type of housing has become popular since the 1970s, and a large number of its citizens are settled in these complexes now. In fact, these buildings form the main part of the look of Tabriz city. Therefore, identifying the factors that form the architecture of these buildings is of paramount importance. As such, this paper aims to examine the effects of economic, social, cultural, and political factors, which constitute the main dimensions of modernity, on various dimensions of the architecture of contemporary residential complexes of Tabriz city. To this end, experts have been surveyed by means of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the degree of attention paid to each of these dimensions in designing the facade, plan, form, and orientation of these complexes, and selecting the location, materials, structure, and their density has been evaluated. In addition, the importance and impact of these factors of modernity in the formation of architectural dimensions of residential complexes have been compared and determined. The results show that modernity has been effective in the architecture of Tabriz residential complexes but the impact of various dimensions of modernity is not the same; in fact, he economic dimension has been the most influential one in the formation of these complexes in Tabriz. In addition, among the economic elements, ‘utility’ has had the highest impact on all aspects of the architecture of residential complexes in Tabriz.

The existence of sense of place in an urban space is one of the prerequisites of its durability. The studies conducted in the field of sense of place in urban spaces so far are general and qualitative and do not differentiate between various levels with different measurement indicators. The studies based on Shamaie’s sevenfold classification theory are even qualitative and have not specified the indicators for each level. Therefore, the procedure used in assessing sense of place in this study is innovative. In this research, an attempt was made to systematically assess the levels of sense of place in an urban space. Expanding the concept of sense of place in urban spaces and conceptualizing it in the form of an empirical model for the assessment of sense of place and its various levels based on the Shamaie’s sense of place theory are the key goals of this study. The main question addressed in this research is to see how activities affect people's sense of place in urban public spaces. The research methodology was originally of documentary type, the results of which are presented in a detailed table. Then, the empirical model of the research was extracted by means of conceptualization method and analyzed by Delphi method through consulting the experts. In the next step, using an inductive method and survey study in two urban spaces of Tehran (Imam Hossein Square and Imam Khomeini Square), a questionnaire, in line with the adjusted model, was completed by 400 of the present citizens and the data were analyzed by SPSS. The sense of place was measured using the Beta test. Through the correlation test, it was found that the sense of place increases with increasing gravity, and especially the diversity of activities, as well as moving away from compulsory activities to selective and in particular social ones. Finally, some strategies have been put forward to improve the sense of place in urban spaces based on the results of the study.

Contemporary city is increasingly in the state of transformation. These are the developments that constitute part of our country’s history of urbanism but their documentation has been neglected. Probably, one of the main reasons is that in the labyrinth of urban problems, documentation has never enjoyed a good status in research priorities or urban management plans of actions. The present study has taken one step towards resolving this issue. As studying city as a whole is out of the scope of this study, an attempt was made to focus on neighborhoods and their historical changes to determine the typology of these urban spaces and identify their unique characteristics. The typology of Zanjan neighborhoods was studied based on the morphological dimensions of urban design. First, in the theoretical framework, the concepts of neighborhood and typology were discussed and summed up. Next, using qualitative research strategy and documentary research concerning Qajar, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods, eight main types of neighborhood development/design in Zanjan city were identified. In order to study the issue in detail, one sample neighborhood of each type was selected. Then, based on historical research perspective and the existing documents as well as interview with key informants, the sample neighborhoods were studied. The results of the study are indicative of the appropriate use of typological studies and along with documentation of urban residential textures, facilitate the process of studying these textures systematically.

Infill development, the inevitable necessity of the city in the face of uncontrolled urbanization, is the creeping of city towards suburban and urban sprawl. However, the effect of paying attention to its consequences on the city's structure in improving future actions requires us to pay focal attention to evaluation in spite of its being carried out later in comparison to the early stages of development. It is also found inevitable to evaluate the success of each development over time in accordance with the objectives identified by urban institutions and national plans. Although the growth of city emerges gradually and is the result of the complex interaction of various and sometimes hidden factors over time, the reflection of all major decisions and influential factors, both physical and functional, is progressively updated in the mental content of the inhabitants. Based on this, the rate of mental convergence and citizens’ consensus for further interactions can be indicative of making due decisions at the beginning of the formation and coherence of successful development in the level of interactions of the section added to the field in terms of function and space. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the success of infill development in a case study of Danesh Alley in Tabriz city after the residents’ three decades of settlement in the old neighborhood of Imamiyeh using the criteria extracted out of the principles of contextualism and their effect on the mental content of the residents.

One of the most important factors causing urban sprawl and a rupture in the form or the morphologic continuum is the imbalanced growth of cities along with the entanglement of heterogeneous elements and zones. Through the history of the evolution of Iranian cities, the relationship between a city as the most striking manifestation of built environment and its natural surrounding has always been an indication of a kind of harmony. The nature of the evolution of the city reveals the presence of an initial nucleus and the organization of certain specific spatial-physical bodies around it. In this combination, the city transect is formed in such a way that the highest density is reflected in the center. With transition to the periphery, the density of the texture is reduced. This process continues up to the connection between the physical environment and the natural background, and the boundary of the city's ramparts and historic fences represents some kind of entry into the natural arena. With an emphasis on the process-oriented nature of the transect procedure, this study is an attempt to customize and localize the procedure of drawing the urban transect of Shiraz as a method to differentiate various urban landscapes by recognizing their features and analyzing them with GIS. In this study, based on the literature indicating the necessity of following the order resulting from the nature of the evolution of cities, the urban transect of Shiraz has been drawn and analyzed. The necessity of drawing and presenting this transect is more evident when the results reveal that the process of transformation and urban growth has been thoroughly different from the continuum and morphologic order of the historic city. Accordingly, the output of this study is to present an urban transect of Shiraz and determine its six morphologic zones. The result of the study is to provide a framework for using the rules based on built environment form in each of these zones with an aim to avoid common zoning. In fact, this measure can have a significant impact on re-establishing order and creating balance between natural and built environments.