Recognition and assessment of influential elements on social interaction (strengthening and improving citizen communication in urban open spaces, model city of Sanandaj)

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Abstract

The rate of success in urban areas can be attributed to the rate of the use and presence of human being in that place. In fact, architecture should improve social interactions and human relationships and should be void of anything that would cause separation and departure of human beings. Nonetheless, the architecture as can be seen today in city centers appears to be mostly intended to decrease social communication.  It specifically lacks the social participation of residents of urban areas. The streets have hierarchy and meet certain qualitative and quantitative features whose goals and roles are determined based on their significance in the city structure. To the same effect, coherence in the architecture of cities is important because it acts like a discipline which links individuals and groups together.  The channels in which the currents are established and the capacity of channels through which we communicate with others are quite different. This has made the streets as a great communication channel in the city. In fact, streets are considered as the most important infrastructure and basic public open spaces that are easily available. Therefore, it is important to pay appropriate attention to the streets. This is particularly important when considering that the streets have a social function as well, regardless of their regular functions like facilitating transportation, etc. The present research seeks to argue the low level of social interaction in urban area as a main issue. It in fact tries to solve this problem and recognize the different elements involved through quantities methods. The research studies the main streets of Sanandaj city and its historical perspectives and seeks to examine social interactions in the city as well as the factors involved in it. Needless to say that public areas comprise complex patterns of operation and include various concepts. Therefore, recognizing these relations can be effective in designing highly efficient public areas. Also, recognizing various elements in city architecture including physical, social and individual elements that promote social interactions are equally important. Nevertheless, there are currently no specific mechanisms for assessment of elements involved in social interactions in Iran’s urban streets. The main motives for doing the present research were recognizing the positive and negative qualities of characters in order to identify which areas need to be improved and which areas need to be removed. In this research we want to use different techniques to study and recognize urban streets in order to explore space requirement for improving citizen relationships in streets of the city. Therefore, the research tries to evaluate social space variations and elements of streets, examine streets features, analyze region capacity and examine local potentials. The main goals of the research include classifying the qualitative parameters of streets and extracting variations (qualitative elements of urban streets such as usage, permeability, security and legibility) and evaluating variants of regions which are effective social interaction at the local scale.      This research makes it clear that main streets of Sanandaj have not been successful in creating and improving social interactions. In fact, the streets of Sanandaj do not have an appropriate place in collective livelihood of the city dwellers.  The main streets are major routes of normal movement rather than selective and social activities.  The current statue is affected by physical problems and the kind of people’s attitude toward type, shape and level of social information.   Finally, for the improvement of the current situation on the streets, achieving a moderate solution to strengthen social interactions as a meaningful and sustainable solution based on guidelines and attitudes of the dwellers is necessary. On the other hand, atmosphere designers always encounter different challenges in designing public spaces and what is important here is that among different variants effective in social relationships, which variance examines others variances and also which determines the personality features of the dwellers. In conclusion, the final model demonstrates the way and the level of effect of different variants in social interaction in order to be used for space designers. This shows that streets could have the most important place in responding to the needs of the first level of the society but rarely reach the highest level. The present research has taken into consideration the field studies.  It has also analyzed the geometric heterogeneity location (site formation) and the proportion of current activities in the streets.  The results show that physical features of streets are the most important factors in the reduction and loss of quality aspects of such spaces. This is in a way that high congestion and lack of space in sidewalks have already turned them as simply corridors for passing. This status increases in the peak hours (afternoons and evenings).    

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