Urban Planning
Saeed Hossein Abadi
Abstract
Introduction
In the last few decades, the number and use of motor vehicles have increased dramatically in cities across the world and urban spaces and mobility have been dominated by motor vehicles. Thistrend has made various environmental, social, and economic issues for cities and has threatened their ...
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Introduction
In the last few decades, the number and use of motor vehicles have increased dramatically in cities across the world and urban spaces and mobility have been dominated by motor vehicles. Thistrend has made various environmental, social, and economic issues for cities and has threatened their sustainable development. Therefore, in recent years, special attention has been paid to changing the mobility model as well as urban design and planning. So that the urban sustainable development paradigm and theories like New Urbanism emphasize the reduction of automobile dependence and increasing the walkability of urban space.
Walkability refers to the extent to which an environment is suitable for walking. There are various environmental, social, and economic benefits for walkability in urban spaces. Therefore, recognizing the various factors affecting the walking of citizens, including physical-spatial indicators and planning to improve these indicators can be effective in the sustainable development of cities. Consequently, in the study, the relationship between physical indicators of urban space and citizens' walking rate in Qaen city neighborhoods is analyzed.
Data and Method
The general approach of the present study is descriptive-analytical. This research is applied research and correlational research that seeks to investigate the relationship between a set of variables. The data collection method is library and field study. Statistical population is the inhabitants of Qaen city, that are about 43,000 people. The sample size is 360 people and the sampling method is simple random. The share of each neighborhood in this sample size was determined based on the population share of that neighborhood from the whole city. The dependent variable in this study is citizens' walking rate and the independent variable is composed of the physical-environmental factors, such as access to diverse land uses(land use mix), visual quality of urban spaces, quality of sidewalks, and connectivity of the street network. Multiple regressionhas been used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.
Results and Discussion
The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between the level of land use diversity and the rate of citizens' walking. So it can be expected that with the increase in the land uses diversity in urban neighborhoods, the probability of walking will increase. The land uses diversity and proximity of residential units to various urban and neighborhood activities (commercial, office, green space, schools, parks, restaurants etc.) makes less need to use motor vehicles and instead, walking is considered as a basic mode of mobility within neighborhoods. On the other hand, the mixture and diversity of land uses in an urban area can cause more people to be present in urban spaces and this presence increases the sense of security that encourages walking.
Another finding is that the connectivity of the street network has a positive effect on the level of citizens’ walking. In fact, the connectivity of streets, based on the frequency of intersections and their short distance from each other in a range, helps to connect multiple paths and, on the other hand, reduce the speed of vehicles. This makes it possible, firstly, to select a variety of routes for walking within the neighborhood, and secondly, due to the close distance of the intersections in reducing the speed of motor vehicles, the safety of walking increases.
The results also showed that the effect of sidewalk quality is significant on people's walking rate. Thus, it can be said that improving the quality of sidewalks can increase the desire of citizens to walking. However, the relationship between visual quality and walking in the neighborhoods of Qaen city was not conformed. So the visual quality of urban spaces (beauty, cleanliness, lighting, etc.) has not affected the level of citizens’ walking.
Conclusion
The study examined four important physical indicators of walkability to determine how much it affects walking in Qaen city. According to the findings, 3 indicators including diversity of land use, connectivity of the street network, and sidewalk quality have a positive and significant effect on the amount of walking, but the visual quality indicator does not have a significant effect on people's walking. Thus, it can be said that by improving these three indicators along with social and cultural planning, citizens' walking rate is expected to increase in this small city.
Urban Planning
ataollah zarafshan; Mohammadreza Pourmohammadi; Esmail Nasiri; Seyyed Mahdi Moasa Kazemi
Abstract
Introduction Changes in urbanization after the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of modernism in urban planning have destroyed the traditional elements and structures of cities, and functional zoning has replaced the organic system and functional diversity of cities and urban neighborhoods. Based ...
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Introduction Changes in urbanization after the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of modernism in urban planning have destroyed the traditional elements and structures of cities, and functional zoning has replaced the organic system and functional diversity of cities and urban neighborhoods. Based on this division, a special space was provided for each of the city's functions so that their performance did not interfere with each other and did not disturb each other. Because cities are complex, complex, and multifunctional systems, limiting them to four functions and separating them through segregation and zoning has reduced the efficiency of cities and thus imposed many problems on cities. Following the criticism of this model, postmodern urbanism was introduced, in which a kind of nostalgia for the past, lost truth, and the search for the lost meaning can be seen. Postmodernists are interested in mixing urban lands to enliven urban neighborhoods, emphasizing pluralism. Today, land use - the immediate vicinity of homes, places of activity and services in buildings, neighborhoods of mixed use and urban areas - has become an important principle for the good urban shape in the 21st century. In Iran, with the beginning of developments in the second half of the twentieth century, the city went out of its traditional form and took a step towards renewal and expansion. In the meantime, the city of Tabriz, as one of the most important historical cities in the country, has not been deprived of these developments. In this city, in addition to the traditional textures that have undergone changes, new areas have also been built around the criteria of modern urban designs. Poverty zones have also been added to the city without any plans. At present, it seems inevitable to return to the traditional concept of a neighborhood in order to achieve a sustainable and sustainable human city. Given the importance of this issue, this research firstly wants to measure the level of land use mix in different residential areas of Tabriz in the current situation and secondly it wants to know whether mixing land use in urban areas can be an incentive for pedestrians be on top of most residents? Methodology The type of research in this paper is practical and its review method is analytical-comparative. The data collection method has been performed both in the library and in the field. To measure the mixing of land uses, first, urban land uses in the study areas were classified into six categories: 1) residential land uses, 2) commercial land uses, 3) administrative and law enforcement land uses, 4) Cultural uses and leisure, 5) General uses such as educational use, health use and 6) Other uses. Then, through the entropy index and the Atkinson index, the amount of mixing in each of the three tissue tissues was calculated. Also, 588 people were selected using the Cochran's formula and the necessary information was collected through a questionnaire to collect the level of desire to access each user on foot in the neighborhoods of the study areas. The instrument for measuring the questionnaire was a 7-item questionnaire that included a five-item Likert scale that assessed respondents' views on how much they wanted to access different uses on foot. Finally, the relationship between the degree of desire to access pedestrians and the level of mixing of users through Pearson correlation coefficient was evaluated. Results and discussion Based on the two main components of this research, namely pedestrian and mixed use, the neighborhoods of traditional, modern and unplanned textures in Tabriz metropolitan area were compared, the results of which revealed many differences between different neighborhoods. According to the calculation of the Entropy index and the Atkinson index, the average land use mixed in traditional texture neighborhoods is 0.673 and 0.588, respectively; This indicates that land use mixed is more common in traditional neighborhoods than in modern and unplanned textile neighborhoods. Of course, there is a large gap between the use of mixed among the neighborhoods of traditional textures. The difference between the Entropy Index and the Atkinson Index in calculating the mixing rate is that the Atkinson Index shows a gap between the higher availability and changes in the ranking of some neighborhoods. In examining the relationship between the tendency of pedestrians to access the required land uses and the level of mixing of land uses in different contexts, different results were obtained. The result was a very high correlation between the two variables of mixed use and the tendency to access pedestrians in traditional tissue neighborhoods, but this correlation is less common between modern tissue and unplanned neighborhoods. Thus, neighborhoods of traditional textures, despite their physical problems (such as wear and tear, lack of proper infrastructure), are still considered human-oriented neighborhoods where the human scale prevails. Conclusion The results of this study are in line with most of the research conducted in this field, with the exception of one case mentioned in the background of the research. Jun and Hur believe that despite the strengthening of the centralized sidewalk with increasing land use mixing, other variables such as the prevailing social and economic conditions, such as poverty and insecurity, could affect the relationship between land use mix and the central sidewalk. In general, it can be noted that this research can have a small but important contribution to the impact of physical elements on the social environment. However, according to the dimensions of the study area, its findings cannot be generalized. Because multiple and complex factors can affect the level of social behavior of neighborhood residents. Therefore, various variables such as social, economic, and political factors can be studied in relation to the effect of the physical environment on the social behavior of citizens