Urban Design

There are large areas of the world where seismicity is high while they form the whole or parts of urban conglomeration. Iran can be literally compared to a large shaking table; various parts of it have been stricken by earthquake in the last four decades(1). Tehran is also expected to have a major earthquake in the near future(2). Therefore, urban design criteria for earthquake preparedness in organic urban areas of Tehran should be prepared. Among various parts of the city, the organic areas are facing more problems due to their old and unsafe structures and being located in narrow lanes and alleys while gas pipes running every where. In case of earthquake, people will be traped in these places where it will be very difficult for the fire fighting vehicles, ambulances and othe facilities to reach to the affected parts to provide health care services and aid. This paper tries to point out that although prevention of earthquake or strengthening of each and every urban structure is not possible, but at the same time the harsh effect can be toned down with the preparedness of urban transport and built form along them. It is a well known fact that after every earthquake, victims are trapped alive below the debris. This makes it imperative that a hierarchy of earthquake safe centers shall be available at all levels of the settlements and a network of roads is essential for the free flow of emergency vehicles and equipment to make the job of relief and rescue work easier.

In this essay I present a new and empirically-testable strategy for completing quantum mechanics. In recent decades, urban design and architecture disciplines witnessed plenty of theories and school development. Primarily, those disciplines are inspired by philosophical perspectives. Thus, it is required to have a good deal of perception on the philosophical roots. Contextualism theory and approach is considered one of the most important controversial approaches in urban design and architecture. The present study intends to elaborate contextualism and explicate its difference with other similar philosophical ideas. Subsequently, it tends to explain the epistemological and philosophical foundations of contextualism in postmodernism and Gestalt school and subsequently to elucidate its position in the postmodern art and specifically in postmodern urban design and architecture. Contextualism is an idea based on the epistemology that the meaning perceived from an epistemological sentence would differ according to the epistemological standards. The idea has three distinct uses in philosophical views, primarily, the truth condition of the sentences is come to be assessed; in the second use, the language meaning is dependent on the context. The paper indicates the first and second uses of contextualism are mostly seen in urban design and architecture contextualism theory.

This paper evaluates and ranks the temporal dimensions, known as fourth dimension of urban design, of a number of places in a city by TOPSIS method. TOPSIS method is technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution. TOPSIS is one of the renowned methods for classical multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems that defines the positive ideal solution and negative ideal solution to maximize the benefit criteria and minimize the cost criteria. The best solution is a point that has the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution and the farthest distance from the negative ideal solution. Because of the vagueness of the input data, triangular fuzzy numbers are applied. In addition, Euclidian distance and a new positive and negative ideal solution are used in this paper. This technique is implemented in Marand, Iran to evaluate fifteen important places based on eight criteria of temporal dimensions. Closeness coefficient values verify the ranking order of fifteen important places, which is a vital decision for the urban managers.

Pedestrian areas are a type of urban public space, nowadays because of the serious consequences of car-dependency and ignoring pedestrian needs, a consensus on the importance of walking and the necessity for planning for pedestrians movement has been formed among urban designers, planners and people. The concerns about human health and movement in city create a new trend in contemporary urbanism, entitled “pedestrianization movement”. So far, walking in the streets has been defined under the influence of cars and they have always been given a priority over pedestrians. As a result, cars gradually conquer urban spaces, retreat pedestrians from their essential rights to use public spaces. If it is accepted that the quality of urban public areas has a considerable influence on citizens’ everyday social activities, this influence can be seen much greater in car free zones than anywhere else in the city. The main attention of the present study is enhancing social interactions in urban spaces, so the main purpose of the study is finding solutions and providing a model and design criteria to promote social interaction of citizens. The research methodology is qualitative which is based on reviewing literature of pedestrian areas and social interactions. The case of study is Khajoo Neighborhood, one of the oldest and historical neighbors of Isfahan1. The result shows that design of pedestrian zones invite people and residents to spend their time in urban space and have social interactions.

As it is commonly understood, Urban neighborhoods play a significant role in developing urban sustainability as the smallest unit of city so that the formation and promotion of neighborhood identity, and focusing on social relationships would be in harmony with urban sustainability. It is believed that a dramatic change in spatial structure of urban neighborhood include a decline in levels of political, social and economic role of neighborhoods as long as they have had some disadvantages such as environmental pollution, marginalization, poor housing, socialpsychological and cultural damages, and particularly losing spiritual and material values as well in the recent decades. To limit these disadvantages associated with communities, neighborhood centers should be designed. The purpose of this study will analyze the concept of neighborhoods and neighborhoods’ centers and their effects on urban sustainability by descriptive- analytical approach and by gathering information through libraries and reviewing documents. This paper engages in analyzing components, dimensions, factors of sustainability and neighborhoods centers that integrated in the final model which characterized by practical-economic, environmental, empirical- aesthetic components; and, the validity of the used questionnaires based on factors of this model with 387 subjects (the selected sample) and the reliability of the questionnaires by using Cronbach Alpha through Bartlett Test and KMO factor at high level of 0/85 was proved. The level of significance of each component was reexامینed by concerning their effects on urban sustainability. By applying multiple- regression test, the statistical outcomes reveal that designing based on environmental components have the utmost impact on neighborhoods sustainability.

In urban planning, access to public spaces provides social relations for citizens. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the elderly's requirements in public spaces (case study of Sheet Bazaar, Zanjan, Iran) in order to recognize and classify their strengths and weaknesses and present more appropriate and effective strategies for their improvement. In this research, the related literature on old age and requirements of the elderly in public open spaces was reviewed and the factors affecting their use of physical places were determined at the first stage of the study. After reviewing the literature, some observations on the elderly were made and questionnaires were given to 80 users with the age of over 65 years old to serve the purpose of this study. The results of the questionnaires indicate that the frequent problems of the elderly in public open spaces were identified as follows: pollution (24.8%), pavements and roads (24.6%), traffic (14.4%), safety (12.2%), insufficiency of maintenance and management (9.6%), and socio-cultural problems (5.3%). In addition, the result of the observations in the main research area shows that the design properties had the highest and maintenance-management services had the lowest success percentages. In the end, some solutions were presented for designing new public open spaces and developing the existing spaces.

Purpose of this article is to introduce different approaches in reviewing the mutual relationship between the built environment and citizen’s behavioral patterns in public spaces with applying analytical and comparative methods by using a questionnaire, a sample of 200 members of the audience in two streets of Mashhad, Kouhsangi and Qaranei, by using two tests of the ordinal logistic regression and the Kruskal-Wallis have been conducted. This study seeks to develop a conceptual framework identifying influential elements in regeneration public spaces and in order to identify factors contributing to numerous variables have been studied such as a variety of activities, Sociability, location of public spaces, diversity, and dynamism, impact and effect of behavioral patterns. This article first attempt to clarify the importance of this issue and establish the position of behavioral patterns in relation to the physical and built environment. Then develop a conceptual framework to identify the impact and effectiveness of various criteria. The results of this study indicate Classification of parameters affecting the interaction between the built environment and citizens' behavioral patterns that can be used in the next preceding studies and in various public spaces, especially street, be measured.

Social diversity in the neighborhood districts has been the new approach for the challenges resulting from varieties in cities. Social interpreters of this policy are to create neighborhoods where people of different ages, ethnic-racial backgrounds, income, etc. take a place in it. In this regard, many designers by using the concept of different forms of ownership such as housing schemas, different types of constructing and housing etc. have tried to promote it. Due to the less interest that came toward this issue, the knowledge of this mechanism is poor in urban ecology of Iran. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of urban design in promoting the social mixing which is determined with the research of the Abadan community areas. Relevant parameters have been studied with library studies, field visits and by the use of qualitative and quantitative analytical methods. Therefore, after reviewing the relevant concepts, we are going to test hypotheses by the exامینation of case studies, and finally, the influences of urban design criteria are presented.

This Study has discussed the meaning of public space and has shown that public spaces are an essential part of people’s lives. It has also identified the key urban design and architectural ideologies that have influenced the shape of the built environment, and has discussed how each has perceived the value of public spaces. In the following provides an overview of the relationship between people’s behavior and experience of public spaces, from an environmental psychology perspective. Methodologies adopted for the study. A combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting data has been used. The purpose of this study is to explore how public spaces influence human behavior in order to gain an appreciation of the significant role that public spaces play in the daily lives of people. This Study has established that human behavior and experience of public spaces can be influenced by the physical and ambient features of the built environment. It has been identified that physical features may include buildings, streets, landscaping, land forms and architectural elements, and ambient features may include sound, smell, temperature and illumination. It has also been identified that other factors such as age, gender, culture and ethnicity are also capable of affecting the way people respond to the environment. In addition to identifying the perspectives of the users of public spaces through the focus group, the study also identified the role and perspectives of urban planners and consultant designers. These built environment professionals have a significant role in shaping public spaces.

Microclimate in open space affected by the urban layout and spatial forms plays an important role in the outdoor comfort, thus the outdoor activities based on the comfort sensation will directly affected by the spatial forms. An outstanding open space should satisfy different requirements of outdoor activities and create relatively comfortable place.Most studies have been conducted on these relationships only above 0 Celsius degree. However, only few have focused on extreme situations in both hot summer and cold winter. Therefore, from microclimate perspective, taking people’s comfort and spatial behaviors as criterions, this research discussed how the open space forms affect microclimate, thus affect comfort sensation and spatial behaviors. The outcomes may provide some useful insights for planners and architects to understand the relationship among microclimate, open space and people. Results showed that in hot season, shade and air-flow played crucial roles in outdoor comfort. More people tend to stay outside in the shade and the area with higher air velocity. After sunset is popular period for outdoor activities. The ambient temperature lower than 29.6 ℃ , air velocity higher than 1.1m/s and relative humidity higher than 67% is needed to achieve neutral comfort sensation. In cold season, at the same ambient temperature, lower air velocity raised the comfort level. Shade also had influences on comfort sensation but do not affect spatial behaviors significantly. The ambient temperature higher than -14.4 ℃ , air velocity lower than 1.6m/s is the thresholds for an acceptable outdoor environment.

INTRODUCTION: Cities as human settlements have always been at risks. Therefore, they need to have a mechanism to keep safe against dangers automatically. Moreover, this self-safety mechanism happens when passive defense principles observe in the city design. Public spaces should have multi-purpose applications so that their defensive function can also be utilized in addition to the main purpose. The aim of this research is to investigate the passive defense components in the design of urban parks. METHODS: This study is practical-developmental based on purpose and descriptive-analytical based on the nature that was carried out in the Janet Garden of Shiraz, Iran in 2017-2018. The statistical population is Shiraz citizens using random sampling method. The sample size was 384 according to Cochran formula. Data were collected using questionnaire and was validated based on Cronbach's alpha (above 0.7) and binomial test and one-sample t-test were used to test the hypotheses. The confidence level and the error rate were 95% and 5% respectively for all three hypotheses. FINDINGS: The results show that observing the principles of passive defense are effective in urban parks designing based on four criteria such as citizens' security, stability of natural elements, variability of performance of park components, and park space. Most people using the park were 21-35 year olds with a diploma and associate degree and a monthly visit. CONCLUSION: Observing the principles of passive defense in designing or redesign urban parks in addition to improving defensive performance increased the sense of security of citizens’ health and leads to the stability of the elements, components, and park space.