ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Original Research

Authors

Kaviani   E. (1)
Afzalian   Kh. (*1)
Sahaf   M. (1)
Seyedolhosseini   SM. (1)






(1) Department of Architecture, Fac‐ ulty of art and Architecture, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad , Iran

Correspondence

Address: Department of Urbanism, Faculty of art and Architecture, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ostad Yusofi Street, Emamieh Boulevard, Ghasem Abad, Mashhad, Iran. Postal Code: 9187147578.
Phone: +98 (51) 36093772
Fax: +98 (51) 36093772
khosrow.afzalian@gmail.com

Article History

Received:  September  16, 2020
Accepted:  October 9, 2020
ePublished:  March 18, 2021

BRIEF TEXT


Public spaces as inseparable parts of civilization are essential for cities' liveliness. The possibility to make social communications is of great importance in such spaces.

Jacobs (1961) and Montgomery (1995) are the first who mentioned the concept of vitality in public spaces and counted it more important than physical needs in urban planning. Kashef (2016) reviewed various scientists' opinions and concluded that the concept of vitality in urban spaces is highly dependent on spatial flexibility, physical differences and human characteristics. Those spaces are active that there is a clear relationship between people and objects and people are able to understand their environment [Rapoport, 1997]. Reis (2010) divides the aesthetic characteristics of each space into two main groups of emotional characteristics including color, smell, sound and texture and physical characteristics including maintenance, neatness, complexity, lighting, texture, vegetation and movement.

This study aimed to identify the main factors affecting space vitality in Mashhad urban spaces and their inner relationship.

This is a descriptive study.

The current research is done on residents of Mashhad from December 2019 to March 2020.

200 people were selected randomly as the studied samples.

A questionnaire was used to collect data and SPSS 25 software was used for the statistical analysis. Moreover, 40 photographs from the most populated spots of Mashhad were used.

Analyzing the reasons people have behind their feeling toward various spaces, the main characteristics of each space were determined. These characteristics include concepts showing people's perception of the space image. 109 factors were extracted by coding the answers. Figure 1 shows some of these characteristics. According to Figure 1, people chose green spaces as the most influential factor on public spaces vitality. All characteristics were defined in 5 semantic groups and 7 indicators in Table 3. Figure 2 was prepared to show the importance of each characteristic in each space and their rank according to their repetition. According to Figure 2 feeling is one of the main human characteristics helping to recognize and understand the space. Among the studied spaces Arg street at the beginning of Melli park and Daneshgah street in the Golestan Park neighborhood were the most meaningful in terms of emotional values. Arg Street had the highest score in terms of environment quality. The feeling is the most important factor that people mentioned and the environment quality was the most important factor maintains the spaces' vitality.The figures show all Factors and characteristics mentioned by people but it does not mean that all spaces in Mashhad have all these qualities necessarily. The Chi-square test was used for the evaluation of the correlation between these factors and their relationship. Table 4 shows the Chi-square statistic and its expected amount. All shape and appearance physical characteristics, positive and negative feelings, direct and indirect activities are combined and are evaluated in relation to other components.

Comparison of the current research with studies done by Montgomery (1998), Beck (2009), and Golkar (2001) shows that physical, cultural and environmental studied characteristics are similar and they are all consistent in terms of the classification of the factors and indicators.

There is no suggestion reported.

There is no limitation reported.

This study could analyze the perception of people from the image of the public spaces and showed that factors influencing public spaces vitality can be classified into 7 main groups of environmental quality, appearance and shape characteristics, elements, space function, feelings and semantic features, activities and nearby land uses. According to the results, the most important physical factors are characteristics related to the buildings such as the nearby buildings, streets, sidewalks and etc. Nearby land uses, furthermore, are motivations for some activities like watching, eating, shopping, talking, walking and etc. Relevant elements in public spaces such as benches, urban furniture and so on are of great importance. Three main characteristics of spaces, land uses and elements show their importance and their effect on the feeling and their behavior. Two remained characteristics of environment quality and appearance and shape characteristics are not of importance in Mashhad. Then, green space, use of water, nice weather, lighting and other factors affecting the environment quality are very weak. Form factors such as color, texture, scale, arrangement, diversity, complexity and flexibility are ignored and do not have a significant effect on the urban vitality.

We tend to thank Azad University of Mashhad.

None.

None.

This study is carried out at second author's personal expense and is extracted from his Ph.D. thesis.

TABLES and CHARTS

Show attach file


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