The purpose of the present study is first to assess the existing status of the central pedestrian precincts of Rasht based on four criteria (accessibility, comfort and convenience, imageability and tourist land-use and activities) and then to evaluate the impact of each of these criteria on the desirability of precincts for tourists. The research method is descriptive-analytical, and the method of gathering is documentary and survey. Statistical population is tourists who have visited the central area of Rasht by foot. The sample size was 322 according to Cochran formula. One-sample t-test and multiple regressions were used for data analysis. The results show that among the four important and influential indicators of precincts desirability of the central area of Rasht based on tourists' viewpoints, imageability indices, comfort and convenience and the existence of specific tourism land-uses and activities (above) Average. The results of the regression model also show that the four factors of the study have a positive effect on desirability of precincts for tourists. Among these, the index of imageability has the most impact on desirability of precincts for tourists and then, according to indices of accessibility, the existence of tourist land-use. And then indicators of comfort and convenience.

This research paper lays stress on philosophies of human desire. All the human being has some psychical need in addition to physical needs. And to satisfy the psychical needs, there is a need for stimulants, more in case of exclusive pedestrian precincts. Having exclusively Pedestrian precincts/Cores in city design draws its inspiration from the fact that public zones, accessible to majority of citizens, represent zones where anything and everything, that characterizes a town, happens. They, consequently, must allow for the most varied form of behaviour from that of a child to that of old people to that of physically challenged. As a result such zones need to have Design Elements to serve their varied behavioral patterns. Designing Pedestrian precincts are different essentially because of time dimension where a longer time lag is required to experience the pedestrian friendliness of pedestrian precincts. Such external stimulants can be a moderate degree of complexity, novelty, surprise, and uncertainty attained by incorporating appropriate pedestrian friendly design elements in pedestrian layouts such as richness of architecture, landscape elements, water bodies, to sit and stroll through, and commuters’ infrastructure. In this article/paper a detailed study of abovementioned Design element, external stimulants and pedestrian friendly design elements in pedestrian layouts will be discussed in detail.

In recent decades, urban tourism has led to various spatial evolutions in the holy city of Mashhad. Excessive concentration of key actors of Mashhad urban tourism on the potential of religious tourism caused to the lack of optimal attention to the potential of other types of urban tourism. It is tried in this research with a descriptive approach, to study spatial effects of urban tourism attractions on Mashhad tourism services. For this purpose, the spatial data of the Mashhad urban database has been used. The results of this study indicate the significant spatial effects of Razavi Shrine on the spatial distribution of tourism services studied in this study. Compared to the Razavi Shrine, other tourist attractions have had a different effect on the spatial distribution of urban tourism services in Mashhad.

Introduction: Old neighborhoods that once used to be a major part of cities and were considered as the identity of cities are now facing the problem of natural disaster relief operations partly due to low economic power of the inhabitants of such neighborhoods, partly due to the physical ineffectiveness and the decreasing resistance of the buildings, and partly due to the unsuitability of streets during some failures in streets. This has gained the attention of most urban planners and managers. Therefore, because of the cultural, social and economic values embedded in such old neighborhoods especially in city centre, there remains no solution except rebuilding and rehabilitating such spaces. However, during such rebuildings and rehabilitations, we should not ignore to maintain the historical and cultural sights of such places which are known as our national and cultural values from the past and are known and listed in our cultural and national inheritance.

This study determined copper, nickel and zinc concentrations in soils within the precincts of a copper-nickel mining and urban landfilling environments, and used obtained values to appraise the degree of soil contamination and pollution based on geoaccumulation index, contamination factor and pollution load index. Mean concentrations of copper (252.4 mg/kg), nickel (153.0 mg/kg) and zinc (30.4 mg/kg) in soils around the mining area were considerably higher than those around the landfill (4.3, 0.91, and 13.7 mg/kg, respectively, for copper, nickel and zinc). The mining area was moderate to heavily contaminated with copper, nickel and zinc (1 < I geo < 4), whereas the landfill area was moderately contaminated (1 < I geo < 3). In both areas, the level of copper contamination was higher than that of nickel and zinc. Contamination around the mining environment was attributed to mining activities whereas around the landfill area, migration of leachate from the disposed waste could have been responsible.