Urban parks

Park design in Iran has followed the traditional European style since the Qajar dynasty. The familiarity of Iranians with the spirit of Persian gardens and the low quality of the newest parks is such that users prefer ancient geometrical Persian gardens. Today, those responsible for the design of urban green spaces lacking examples differing from the traditional and thus they are in need of an adequate set of guidelines for how to design for present conditions, users, and their needs. This research focuses on the relationship between park design components and users’ psychological restoration regarding their preferences and perceptions to increase the quality of parks, diminish vandalism, and increase user agency. Psychological restoration is the likeliness that people will be able to rest and recover their ability to focus. A random sample of 100 Tehranian residents was taken by presenting them with images depicting 6 urban parks from around their city. The results were analyzed by grouping into categories: 1-similar activities and 2-by counting and categorizing the individual descriptions of components (frequency of words) contributing to restoration likelihood. Findings showed that the categories mentioned most frequently for high levels of restoration were natural categories including trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, and water. Findings with low levels of restoration and recovery consisted of negative contextual conditions and the absence of nature such as high rise buildings around the parks, lack of trees, and crowds of people. The activities imagined more frequently were playing and other physical activities, social activities, and relaxation.

Cultural planning, as a place-based approach, has been used in some cases, but it is less frequently used in urban parks. In this s tudy, an experimental inves tigation was conducted to explore how cultural planning can be used to identify the cultural resources of Fateh Garden, as one of the mos t popular parks in Karaj, and the officials and users' approach to its cultural resources to provide recommendations to improve Fateh Garden conditions. This s tudy was based on direct observations of components, activities, events, interviews with the park users and officials, and a focus group discussion. The results revealed that Fateh Garden acts as a thriving urban park with popular cultural resources. Based on the cultural resources of Fateh Garden and the use of creative methods, this s tudy has provided sugges tions for improving its situation. The results presented here may also facilitate improvements in other urban parks based on their cultural resources.

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.