Housing and Rural Environment
Year:2011 | Volume:30 | Issue:133|Papers Count:8

Today’s Housing designs, despite of their positive values and ignorance to its concepts, are in contrast with the real life and environment. In the ideal situation to overcome the deficiencies and defects is through real experiments. While today’s architecture is going in this direction, the indigenous housing rather than disregarding life needs and struggle with geographical variables, is very well aware of originality of life and potential environment which have been form in harmony. Good example of this architecture can be seen in rural houses. This kind of architecture which has relatively fixed and sustainable principles did not change easily. Their changes were often slowly from inside and among the long period time. One of the most important features of the rural architecture is considering the design consistent with people’s natural needs, environment and their routine activities, such as type of livelihood spaces. This type of housing which include the living and working spaces present the attention of the architecture to the people’s life, their needs and the physical space which have been created harmony with the life story of the rural residence. Having consider their life, needs and harmony with the natural environment, has resulted to form different kinds of housing, such as tent, arbor, temporary seasonal and permanent houses. Rural architecture, which include housing or public spaces such as cisterns, refrigerators, wind and water mills, pigeon-house (for plants fertility and growth) reservoir and … are clear instances of people’s life. This is similar to a great encyclopedia showing its builder’s worldviews and knowledge. Paying attention to the villages, rural housing and the architecture which is resulted from the human temperament and natural environment around it, could be an appropriate guide for today’s architects to design rural housing. But to start such an approach needs the knowledge on rural housing phenomenology and a new reference to its essence and identity. Such process is an important step towards understanding and cognition of the total subject and could be conducted to achieve the suitable rural housing principles.

Human spends more than 50 percent of his time inside the house, studies have shown that the built environment can affect human health. The unhealthy house can cause many diseases. Unhelthy houses increase the number of asthma, respiratory and skin allergies and lung diseases. Also accidents and domestic injuries are more in these houses. In addition unhealthy houses affect mental and social well being such as: depression, isolation, stress and behavioral abnormalities. The “Healthy House” is not just designing healthy and hygienic shelter, but also includes complete physical, mental and social well being in the house and the environment.The purpose of this paper is to study the meaning of the “Healthy House” and categorize the theories to determine the definition and presents the parameters of the subject. This paper includes four major parts. First, will be determined the definition of health, house and healthy housing. Then, will be considered the importance of the subject and the relationship between the health and the house. Then, will be discussed the literature review and its place in architecture and categorized the healthy parameters of housing and its risk factors. Finally, it considers that the major risk factors of diseases in house are contains of: damp, aerosols, dust, noise, domestic injuries, inappropriate materials, lack of sunlight, overcrowding, social isolation and etc. By finding out the appropriate solutions, these problems will be prevented.

The concept of child-friendly environment has been exhaustively discussed urban dialogue and even realized in many urban settings in developed countries. Yet, neither the theory nor the practice of the concept has reached rural settlements in most developing countries. The diversity of social setting and cultural paradigms makes the generalization of the current urbanized definition of the concept to rural society somewhat unproductive and even damaging. The definition of coherence and attachment in an Iranian family usually spreads a shade of protection over the children, under which the substance of security is justified. As a result, the need for children to take part in the burden of decision-making is often considered irrelevant. However, since the foundations of place attachment is rooted in the active participation in constructing and shaping of environment, and because any failing or destruction affects the children first and foremost, new perspectives on empowerment dictates an overall social participation in which children play an active and crucial role. Children’s right to shape their living environment is explicitly agreed upon among all nations. Furthermore, the two concepts of empowerment and capacity building act as two wings to the soaring concept of development. The definition of empowerment would not be whole without the participation of all age groups within a society, and the prospective nature of capacity building is based upon the participation of the youth and learning aptitude of children.On the other hand, participation in rural setting is in itself a vague term in the lexicon of development; it usually adds up to no more than manipulation of the low income in the society, or the hyperactive and perfectionist demonstrations of the intellectuals. Instances of both these misconceptions of participation can also be found in the practice of child participation throughout the world. Therefore, elucidating the meaning of participation, and the description of methods of rural participation, along with the study of levels of child participation are in order. For this purpose, the basics of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRR), as a scientific method that draws upon traditional knowledge and everyday rural life, is a secure starting point to understand how professionals and scholars can appreciate and initiate participation in a rural society. Subsequently, and based on the general categorization of child participation in Hart’s ladder, a comparison can be made between the capacities of a child in this area and the prerequisites of rural participation. Not surprisingly, there are evidences to show that self initiated instances of child participation in planning, design, conservation, and post-disaster reconstruction of rural habitats are parallel and even richer than adult involvement in many cases. In effect, if a society can encourage and accept the idea of child-participation, the hope for total realization of participatory development is not far out of reach. The present article aims to clarify the meaning of participation in childhood years.Henceforth, through introducing the Participatory Rural Appraisal, it would analyse the experiences related to child participation with different degrees of involvement and in different settings.

During the recent decades, unorganized and informal settlements is gradually formed and expanded mainly in the outskirt of big cities, out of official plan of urban development. This phenomenon is considered as one of the urban dilema in the urban studies. In the process of urban pathology, one of the most important step is an accurate and comprehensive recognition of these dilema. In other words, only accurate recognition from the factors that created these dilama, could present the solution strategy in this regards. Effective recognition in the formation and development of squatter settlement is inevitable more than ever. This accurate and realistic recognition will be useful in two points. First, if an appropriate recognition to be achieved, suitable and illustrative observation would be available against the physical and non physical problems. Secondly, a suitable and appropriate solution to prevent in formation and expansion, also to improve the current condition of these areas. Urban study researchers have presented various reasons for the formation of squatters. According to the diversity of squatter phenomenon, we cannot generalize the reasons for its formation from one city to another. Karaj is one the metropolis of the country that providing various attractions as destination of many immigrants. In this paper, the reasons for formation of informal settlement and the process of its expansion has been studied in the Sohrabiye district of Karaj. This district has an area of about 33 hector and 5247 population and is located in the west of Karaj, next to the Ghezelhesar road.The methodology of the research in this paper has been analytical- descriptive and also analyzing the data resulted from the field survey. The mothod of sampling has been random and 1family from 10 families is selected. The result of this research shows that the origin of residence formation in the Sohrabiye district of Karaj has returned to the year of 1964. The first residents of this district have migrated following the land reformation. After Islamic Revolution (1979) and following the intensity process of migration in Karaj city and also variety advantages of Sohrabiye district for low income emigrants such as cheap land, Proximity to Karaj city and Ghezelhesar road as a connective axis of Sohrabiye district to main structure of Karaj city and lack of precise supervision of municipality on illegal construction. This district is selected as a destination emigration of many migrants. Also the result of research shows that near 85% of the emigrants who came to this district are come from western north and west of the country and their intension is employment. According to this, the necessity of fair distribution of facilities and providing job opportunities in these area could be as a main approach in preventing the expansion of illegal settlement in Sohrabiye district and city of karaj as whole.

In recent years, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has been effected the development in the world, especially in rural areas. In many countries ICTs have increased the quality of rural life with access to necessary information. Therefore, Information and Communication Technology has changed the traditional methods and life of labor force of agriculture to modern methods. ICTs not only increase the incomes in rural areas, but also extended choices for villagers. In other hand, development of internet in rural areas have made world with no boundary and they could directly connected to the world easily.The aim of this paper is study of status and comparative research of rural Information and Communication Technologies and in particular the comparative study of rural ICTs in villages of Khuzestan province.The research method in this article is containing descriptive, analytical, field study and comparative method.This article has used the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) model to analyze the structure of main objects.Statistical data in this article is related to Khuzestan province with 1, 400, 000 of rural population.Khuzestan province with 175 rural Information and Communication centers is ranking 16 in country ranking, compare to other province. This shows that rural ICTs in province of Khuzestan is in lower level in relation to its rural population. Azerbaijan province is first ranking in ICT with 1, 200, 820 rural population and Qom province is last in this regard.

Iranian official Census suggests that with passing of time the share of rural population in Iran is reduced and many villages are depopulated. Statistics also are represented the intensive migration of rural population to cities over the past half century. All of these indicate unsuitable conditions for residency and population attraction in villages of Iran.Problem of desertion of villages and emptying from villagers is an important issue on rural difficulties. This problem has several reasons that most important of them are shortage of facilities and lack of access to several required services. This has caused and considered as undesirable events in the mind of majority of people. In Iran after the Land Reforms period, there was a vast changes appeared in the villager's life and led to extensive rural migration. But after passage of the several decades, these effects faded or vanished and this has been replaced with recession in economy and rural livelihood.In this article based on field study and after introduce of socio- economy characteristics of study population, the reasons for migration from Bandar Anzali rural areas is reviewed.This paper concluded that presently villages of Bandar Anzali are faced with disequilibrium between population and available natural resources that is resulted to create a large number of manpower with lacke of livelihood through agriculture. Field studies shows that the high percentage of emigration from rural areas in Bandar Anzali was in course of need to access to job for livelihood which is due to reduction in natural resources and low level of technology to promote the quality of production level.

In spite of having ample natural resouree for development, villages in Iran are facing economic difficulties that necessitate searching for complementary economic project to compensate the existing shortcomings. Recreation - sport mountaineering is one of such projects. This Type of project within the rural Tourist activities is one of the most popular activities.It appears that although this project offers many promising opportunities in rural tourism, but unfortunately little attention has been paid to it, whereas, once adopted, it may result an extensive economic rewards. The province of Mazandaran is distinct amongst all Iranian provinces, because of its unique physical characters such as relief, climate, sea shores forests, vegetation and etc. All part of this area are valuable as being favourable and attractive for tourism. But the question is that such natural resources have not been duly recognised in the rural tourism of the province. That is why it must be made clear that recreation sport -mountaineerings, potentially is an important and profitable complementary activity in the province’s rural tourism.Therefore, the present project was adopted with the aim of recognizing the part of the province that are most favourable for recreation -sport mountaineering by application of GIS system.Villages considered suitable for this purpose were selected and studied by GIS system in two stages: first, from altitude point of view, namely below 500, 500 to 1, 000 and 1, 000 to1500 meters, and second, population composition, namely villages with below and above 20 families.The result were assessed from four angles: number of villageas, population composition, number of families and road accessibility for rural tourism. The method used in the study was descriptive with GIS analysis. The results obtained from the study has shown that the province of Mazandaran is quite suitable and could offere valuable opportunities practice for recreation –sport mountaineering in its rural tourism. Finally proposals were suggested on the basis of obtained results.

Todays, focus on environment is important, in particular the rural areas, as human try simultaneously to use from nature and to preserve it. Since the villages are near to nature, there are direct relationship between nature and the villages. Therefore they have direct affect from its environment, which is considered as important point in environmental studies. It also shows that why study of rural environment is very important.The objective of this study is to explore and resolve these problems. The methodology of this study was through library and internet search to obtain information on other countries and their activities on rural environment.The finding in this regard was that the erosion, lack of center for waste burial and sewage systems are considered as important problems. There are also other important problems that might be necessary to focus on it, for example land use changes, water and air pollution and destroy of the preserved land. This paper, for decreasing the environmental problems in the villages, it propose that to increase productivity of water resources by improving water network supply system and also to carry out physical development in villages. Also it is essential to increase the productivity by using the existing resources.Another problem in the villages is related to befoul (for example, wood). This causes air pollution in/out home. One of the way to resolve this problem is to supply of electricity into the villages. This helps to decrease carbon monoxide.Population is another component that has positive and negative effects on rural environment.High population and immigration would destroy the rural environment, but, at the same time these crowds can also develop the environmental friendly technology which could protect the environment.In the world, there are some projects Implemented in the rural areas, such as land use management, training, environment management and public participation approach. Which are toward protection of rural environment.