Cognitive maps

Human presence and accordingly establishing suitable condition for social interactions are important factors in shaping urban spaces. Caring to different aspects of improving environmental qualities especially perception aspect and ease of perception from the environment with legibility improvement is an element that was emphasized from the base of urban design. The role of time, commence of day and night and its effect on perception and legibility of the environment have not been investigated deeply. Although time effects the level and the way of perception and legibility and it should be noted that there is clear difference between human perception and space legibility during day and night.This research is looking for effective major factors on urban spaces qualities in day and night with descriptive and comparison method on the case studies and their images of Zanjan and Abadan cities and tries to approve the differences of these images. Results of performing this research clearly approving that, social, functional and perceptional dimensions are the most important dimensions of improving space quality at night. It should be declared that there are a lot of differences between the images and the perception of the city during day and night. In addition, the mention priority to urban five elements in shaping these maps are differ either.

The neighborhood has had a long history in Iranian urbanization. Since urban plans were introduced by the authorities to shape urban development in Iran half a century ago, the concept of Iranian traditional neighborhood has been neglected gradually. The concept of neighborhood has not found the appropriate status in urban design and planning yet. One of the main reasons is that academics, professional urban planners, designers and managers use different definition and no consensus exists on definition of neighborhood. The aim of research is to compare residents’ perception of their neighborhood boundaries with boundaries of administrative-defined Neighborhoods which municipalities consider. The main hypothesis of the research is fundamental difference between these two views: top- down view from experts and urban managers who see the neighborhood as a spatial unit for city organizing and bottom- up view from residents who consider the neighborhood as the place of their social life. The Research methodology has been done base on the survey method and an analytical approach has been applied. The case study is located in Mashhad city in Iran. Four municipality-defined neighborhoods were selected in various urban fabrics of the city. Findings indicate that residents’ definition of their neighborhood was influenced by socio-spatial factors and interaction of these on each other. There is a substantial and fundamental difference between residents’ definition of neighborhood and municipality-defined neighborhood. Finally, this study proposes recommendations for the better definition of administrative neighborhoods in Iran.