Studying Priorities for Designing Urban Landscape of Public Spaces in Assalouyeh Using ANP Model

The landscape of public places plays a crucial role in creation of an efficient urban system as well as urban development in any community. The development of public places in cities, whether from the viewpoint of quality or quantity, will only be efficient and feasible when priorities for current urban issues are determined. A more sound approach on that requires using people’s opinions - as inhabitants of urban spaces - as well as modern scientific methods. Considering that various viewpoints exist with regards to urban priorities and that any decision over urban issues should consider all priorities, the present article tries to identify and evaluate the priorities and approaches for designing public urban places in Assalouyeh. To obtain more accurate findings, the model of Analytic Network Process (ANP) has been applied in the related research. The research is based on a descriptive-analytic approach and uses library resources and field studies. It also uses primary research techniques like interviews with officials from related organizations and distributing questionnaires. The target area is a main park in Assalouyeh, a central street, the traditional bazaar as well as six other urban areas. The first step involved identifying the most important issues relating to urban landscape of public spaces through library resources, interviews and questionnaires. In the next step, the collected data was categorized by considering the features of the ANP model and the issues of Assalouyeh. Accordingly, a conceptual ANP model was prepared which comprised three clusters (criteria/group), and nine options (node/sub-categories). These were carried out by using Super Decisions software. In a further step, the results of field studies were analyzed. The results were presented through charts and diagrams as well as raw written data. Considering the high volume of the investigations, only some findings have been mentioned in the present article. Nevertheless, results show that the highest priorities over designing urban landscape of public spaces in Assalouyeh were related to the nodes of Art Wall (normalized score 0. 513, intuitive cluster priorities), Market and Dolat Street (normalized score 0.544, clusters of public space) and Urban Furniture (normalized score 0.684, the physical structure of clusters - physical) in clusters of three stars. Accordingly, the strategies for designing urban landscapes of public spaces in Assalouyeh were determined based on the comparison of clusters and nodes and the priorities involved. For this, the features of the Urban Furniture, the public space view of buildings and the bazaar, the Dolat Street as well as the Art Wall of the Jomhori Islami were taken into serious consideration.