JOURNAL OF URBAN STRUCTURE & FUNCTION
Year:2025 | Volume:12 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

Ensuring security in urban parks is essential to encourage public use and improve the quality of life for residents and visitors. One way to ensure security in urban spaces is to combine design strategies with the help of planned architectural and urban planning solutions to improve security and activate these spaces. In Abider Park in Sanandaj, due to the large area and the presence of many hidden blind spots, young people may feel that the police do not have the ability to be present in all parts of the park. This can lead to a decrease in the sense of security in this park. Therefore, the current study aims to determine the crime vulnerability of Abider Mountain Park in Sanandaj with the help of urban planning and architectural principles, as well as to propose solutions to increase the sense of security in urban parks. The present research is applied in terms of purpose, and the research methodology approach is a quantitative and analytical survey. Considering the research objectives, a structured questionnaire was distributed among the target community (Abider Park visitors) in December 2023, covering different aspects of the park's inherent characteristics, park design and management, and visitors' concerns. The results were analyzed using statistical tests in SPSS software version 27. The findings showed that factors such as recent incidents of crime, the presence of winding paths, and the presence of intoxicated individuals were the most influential factors in people's concerns about the occurrence of crime. In contrast, the presence of native men and women, the crowdedness of the park, the presence of non-native women, or the presence of people photographing nature the most reduced visitors' fear of crime. According to the results, the presence of police, the installation of surveillance cameras, and allowing personal vehicles to enter the park were the factors that could increase the sense of security among visitors. The results also showed that the sense of insecurity was higher among educated individuals, and social factors played a greater role in the sense of security among women (mean rank = 58.68). The findings provided cultural insights and identified specific but relatively eclectic factors to inform the improvement and enhancement of park security through revised planning, management, and supervision.

Big new cities have been built around Tehran. This research follows the field study of the daily life of the residents of the new city of Pardis in the dimensions and components of the right to the city, and its main purpose is to express and analyze the main problems and demands of the residents of the new city of Pardis, which make life in this city difficult or has caused the dissatisfaction of the residents. The current research was carried out using a qualitative method, and 22 in-depth interviews were conducted with the residents of Pardis city using the purposeful sampling method. In the current research, Brown and Clark’s (2006) thematic analysis method was used to code data and find themes and sought to understand and extract concepts and deficiencies of the rights to the city of the residents of the new city of Pardis. A total of eight main themes were identified for the overarching theme of the right to the city in the new campus city, which is supported by several sub-themes. These main themes include: 1. Difficult public transportation, 2. Poor performance of the architecture company in the new city of Pardis, 3. Cold interaction, 4. Low access to urban services, 5. Inequality, 6. Urban dependence on the mother city, 7. Density of complexes and empty houses, and 8. Daily migration of workers. The dependence of the new city of Pardis on the mother city of Tehran has caused the residents' right to the city to be divided with Tehran, and the lack of job opportunities and poor transportation are two very important determinants of the right to the city in Pardis, which have severely affected the other rights of the residents and has had the most significant impact on social interactions and has reduced the scope of monitoring neighbors.

High-rise buildings, specifically high-rise construction, have always been the focus of many architects, designers, and urban planners; so, the policies related to the use of high-rise construction methods gradually included residential uses in addition to economic uses and spread to the surrounding areas of cities. However, the spaces between high-rise buildings are often ignored. Neglecting these spaces will lead to a decrease in the quality of life. Therefore, an attempt is made to help manage these spaces by benefiting from livability components. On the other hand, considering that today's urban policies align with the goals and principles of sustainable development, this research aims to analyze the livability factors in the interstitial space of high-rise buildings for sustainable development: Golestan Town of Semnan. This study examined theoretical studies of 18 variables in five dimensions: access, physical and use, ecology, urban facilities and equipment, and social dimension. A questionnaire was used to collect data, which was completed by 18 experts. The structural-interpretive method was used with the help of Mic Mac software to analyze the questionnaires. The variables were explained in four groups of two-faceted variables (goal and risk): independent, influential, regulatory, and influenceable. Influential variables include access to the park, a lack of air pollution, and a pleasant smell. Two-faceted variables (risk) include security, functional lighting, and green space. The objective includes urban furniture, recreational use, and social interactions; influential variables, including legibility; independent variables, including access to parking, access to public transportation stations, lack of air pollution, public toilets, and safety; and finally, regulatory variables, including open-air theater, floors, and the formation and absence of solid material contamination, were identified. The variables of security, functional lighting, access to the park, urban furniture, and green space have the most influence, and the variables of readability and safety have the least influence, respectively.

This research aimed to diagnose some mechanisms of urban management (municipality and city council), such as the level of participation of classes and ethnicities, social and economic characteristics, and the spatial distribution of the voting basket of winning and losing groups. This research was developed and carried out using a descriptive and analytical method, with the tool of a researcher-made questionnaire; the sample size was 385 units, and the sampling method was two-stage random. Analysis models were Voting Basket e: Phi-Coefficient, Cramer's V, Lambda, Kolmogorov Smirnov, Chi-2, Cross Table, and Cronbach's Alpha. The problems of Zahedan's urban management were mainly pointed to by the dominance of ethnic approaches. The findings showed that there is a significant and explanatory relationship between the vote basket of the winner and loser list of the election and five relatively key indicators of the voters, including literacy, residential area, ethnicity of the voters, cultural index of the number of children, and finally the level of satisfaction with the performance of the Islamic City Council. However, the damage appears when the larger Voting Basket sometimes includes strata with socio-cultural, spatial-physical, and economic indicators that are lower than average. The fact that the elected officials are indebted to the same Voting Basket as the previous one causes the continuation of the previous defective cycle and the aggravation of the damages. The result is the disillusionment of the entrepreneurial class, the withdrawal of the creative class, the exclusion of the educated, the marginalization of the middle and upper class, and after that, the reduction of participation, the reduction of the sense of belonging to a place, and finally the weakness and weakness of the economic and social foundations of the city. The main loser of this vicious cycle will be the entire city.

Unforeseen crises and natural events are happening worldwide, which have destroyed and changed many people’s lives; this has made it necessary, especially for statesmen and researchers, to always deal with their results and stay safe from the risks they cause. For example, the magnitude 7 earthquake in 1357 in the city of Tabas in Iran was recorded as the most severe earthquake in Iran, which caused the destruction of the entire historical fabric of this city and the loss of more than 20 thousand people, or the flood that occurred in 1380 in Golestan, North Iran has the highest number of casualties in the world. Based on this, the present research aims to evaluate and find solutions to reduce casualties and the destructive effects of natural crises. In doing so, first, the physical indicators at the level of a city, which have an impact on its resilience against crises, were extracted through the review of previous books and research, and then the Specialized GIS urban planning software was used to evaluate each one in the city in question Finally, by using the data obtained from output maps and field data from the region, the city’s resilience was obtained regarding each of the indicators. In the end, considering the weakness of the urban structure in each of the components, solutions were provided to improve the existing situation so that the city could be brought to a higher degree of resilience. The study area in question was one of the newly built cities in the north of Iran

Cities are always dynamic and changing over time; following the strengthening of cities, sociocultural issues such as development, vitality, social justice, etc., have been raised in cities. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyze the main components of sociocultural approaches to urban development in Isfahan city. This study is developmental-applicative in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of nature. Data were collected from documentary-library and field methods (questionnaire). The studied communities were trustees and experts, and the sample size of experts and trustees was determined and completed using the snowball method of 50 and 62 questionnaires. Data were analyzed using EXCELE, GIS software and SWARA, BWM, ANP, and Scalogram techniques. The results show that in the Swara technique, environmental protection with 0.1798, sense of belonging to the city with 0.1831, organizing leisure time with 0.1826, insurance and recreation with 0.1829, locating emergency relief centers with 0.1824, and organizing people communication with officials with 0.1828 have gained the most weight among other indicators. Also, the social dimension with a weight of 0.4000 is ranked first according to the results of the BWM technique. According to the results of the ANP technique, regions 15, 14, 13, 11, 7, 2, and 9 are less developed than other regions. Based on the results of the scalogram technique, the areas of Isfahan are categorized into five levels, from very rich to very deprived. Regions 7, 14, 15, 2, 9, and 11 have also been placed at the deprived to very deprived level. Therefore, it showed the necessity of the managers and officials of urban planning and development to prioritize areas 7, 14, 13, 15, 2, 9, and 11.

The cultural turn in the discourse of urban studies and attention to maintaining cultural diversity in the structure of cities has raised the concept of intangible cultural heritage as a serious matter in the cities. According to the 2003 UNESCO convention, intangible cultural heritage includes knowledge and skills, representations and actions that communities, groups, and individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This issue includes inherited traditions, social activities and actions, rituals, general knowledge and actions related to nature and the surrounding world, which are closely related to the sense of identity and belonging, cultural diversity, and memory and lifestyle in the structure of the city. Fewer theoretical discussions have been raised about the issue of intangible urban heritage. This study leaves aside the discussion about what is called visible and tangible heritage and focuses on its source and origin, that is, intangible heritage. The main scope of this research is a theoretical and conceptual attempt to reach a more expanded definition of the inherent characteristics of intangible heritage as a language of understanding that refers to different dimensions of knowing and understanding the urban problem. In addition, this study discussed the dimensions of understanding intangible heritage in the urban landscape based on Gadamer's opinions about the dimensions of understanding, which are related to the three concepts of language, time, and place. Considering the adaptability and self-regeneration potential of intangible heritage, as well as the capacity to accompany the contemporary and modern trends of urban life and the connection with popular culture and everyday life, it can be expanded as a contextual experience and a social and cultural order of a society. Therefore, reading "the new intangible heritage" is considered a vital problem for the "new social order" in cities.