Housing and Rural Environment
Year:2013 | Volume:32 | Issue:141|Papers Count:8

Behavioral science theories emphasized the role of identity in explaining the ways residential environments interact with residents. Indeed, many researchers suggest the identity as a main purpose of dwelling. So, residents’ identity is one of the most important issues in dwelling concept of settlements architecture. Nevertheless, this issue is paying no attention to literature. In this article, we have attempted to find the theoretical model of interaction between residential environment and residents’ identity.First, on the basis of behavioral science theories which present the hypothesis of the ways in which residents interact with residential environments, then we test the hypothesis with logical reasoning, according to theories and researches that support the issue.As residential environment is a social space, so one can claim that human shape the residential environment with semantic elements according to his/her image in order to interact the others in symbolic interaction through constructed environment and with regard to others’ evaluation of his/her residential environment can evaluate, confirm, and promote his/her identity.Residential environment in its performance as an “extended self” is linkage of man with his physical and social environment and with its two dimensions including the ‘material me’ and the ‘social me’, or as place identity and social identity interprets and explain the relation. Formation of these identities occurs in a reciprocal process and residential environment has placed in it as a symbol of self. In the reciprocal process with individuals, residential environment on the basis of its characteristics declare, interpret, and confirm itself.Resident’s level of identity Assessment through two measures, first “environment’s affordance” that produces environment’s potential interactions through qualitative aspects and efficacy dimension’s of space; and the second is resident’s interactions with environment that generates their belonging feeling to environment through place identity.On the basis of theoretical model that this article suggests, one can conclude that residential environments must be constructed in the way that residents have set them as their identical symbol. So, purposeful design with home’s conceptual elements including base (territory, private, personalizing possibility in semi private open space…) and society (shaping social groups, symbolic interactions with environmental behavior’s regulations) are useful to achieve this. So, the designing should not merely supply residents’ currently needs but also must consider their higher level needs in order that the residential environment can provide adequate and qualitative setting in dynamic process of identity formation. Design of theories of residential environment can be revised with relationship between identity of residence and residential environment.

Agricultural and industrial revolution by changing the way of life and needs, has transformed human’s life and home, and also has created new different expectations of it. Iranian society has experienced a transition in various stages of its history, too. For example, the transition from tradition to modernity which started since the beginning of the last century has influenced on Iranian culture, economy, knowledge, art and architecture and has had positive and also negative impacts. In dealing with Modernism, Iranian cities have lost their traditional architecture and worth by imitating western architecture. So, proper intermediation didn’t happen and the historical framework, buildings and houses were destroyed by automobiles, streets and towers.Today the digital revolution will change life and work styles, communications, technologies, buildings, architecture and specially housing and homes. Thus during this revolution, it is important to identify the type of changes in our housing patterns to provide guidelines for dealing with this transformation to cope with this enormous change and survey what characters has affected the housing development in the world and find the characters that will affect future homes, too. In this process, architects should prepare themselves to choose the best elements of designing, especially home designing that people spend most of their time in it and to find the way of building Ideal forms and housing types in the future and also they should introduce and recognize important factors in the past and in the future. The history of Iranian housing that has correlated the housing in different periods of this country should have been surveyed; and the permanent or variable elements, spaces and concepts should have been recognized. The reason is that recognizing the history of building houses help us to find out the proper context, shape and elements of Iranian future houses that is worthy for Iranian nation and their life.It is clear that the first step of achieving a better result in finding the patterns of future homes is to have an intelligent start. Therefore this article has tried to present proposals for the first steps of finding the patterns of future housing and home design, supporting identity and values of Iranian Housing during digital revolution. For this purpose, the affecting characters and the scope of their impacts on the evolution of housing since the beginning of human settlement have been identified and by studying the future evolution of these characters, the factors shaping the future houses have been introduced.

Rural areas are the residential and productive places that have organic relationships with natural, ecological, economical, social and cultural patterns. Meanwhile, due to the recent changes of economical, social and cultural patterns and also entrance of new technologies in Iran and hence Fars province, rural housing architecture has drastically changed. Our initial investigations revealed that as a result of such changes, the rural sense of the villages in Fars province has altered as well. However, one of the main objectives of this paper is to present the key factors affecting the rural housing architecture in Fars province.Fars is one of the provinces in Iran with a vast variety of rural architecture in its different villages. Therefore, to reach our goals, firstly, we have listed all the villages in Fars with more than 90 families which have been constructed at least fifty years ago, as our target population. Then, with SPSS software and based on the several meteorological data that were gathered from all 24 weather stations in Fars and with the q-mode cluster analysis, Fars province has been divided to five main ecological zones. Finally with the cluster sampling method, 60 villages from the initial list have been selected from those five ecological zones as our clusters. Accordingly we have analyzed the housing architecture in these villages through different methods such as direct observation, filling questioners, interviews and mapping the houses.Our investigations in those 60 sample villages have confirmed that the new housing architecture in the villages of Fars province has hardly been influenced by their traditional rural architecture. In most cases their new architecture is a bad copy of their neighbor’s urban one. This study also leads us to understand the traditional rural housing architecture in Fars province and hence has introduced some main recommendations related to their new housings. Moreover, a range of practical strategies for housing construction and preserving the identity of villages are obtained in this study.To reach such an objective, this paper will address:(1) The current condition of rural housing architecture in Fars province;(2) Some key factors affecting the rural housing architecture in different parts of Fars province;(3) Comparative analysis of housing architecture in different ecological zones of Fars province to find criteria for future designs in such zones;(4) Several guidelines for rural housing constructions; and(5) Essential readings for rural planners, architects and local and national government officers.

Unfortunately, in spite of the rapid progress in knowledge and capability of engineering and technology, none of them could help the rising in quality of spaces and architectural values commensurate with modern life. In such a way that the modern architectural attributes have transformed to single dimension, meaningless with identical quality. In addition, unlike the present cultural, regional, and indigenous differences in the environment, the technology has caused the buildings in different parts of the country to look alike and have no major variation in design. This has caused a reduction in quality of spaces and has made them less satisfying and pleasant while undermining their quality. By paying careful attention to traditional Iranian houses which are constructed based on indigenous technology, we will find out that by using this kind of technology at each and every corner of the house we could make different quality and circumstances all over the house depending on desired application of that space.One of the ways to achieve these lost qualities is to refer to construction methods and technologies and by considering their details, materials, and also their compatibility and suitable combination, optimal qualities of the contemporary houses would be accomplished. These qualities have been emerged in indigenous Iranian architecture and in case of being paid attention, they can be used in designing of today's housing. Thus, in this article, by an exploratory study in relation with the main issue, "Habitat", the technology and indigenous architecture are discussed and in continuation, the potentials of indigenous technologies and effects of them on space are examined.This article by recognizing the potentials of indigenous architecture which are hidden in indigenous technology, is trying to propose various methods in order to achieve designing of spaces with high quality and Iranian identity. Furthermore, this paper is intended to answer following questions in general direction of the article:- What are the Potentials of constructional technologies which are effective on the quality of Iranian housing space?- What is the relationship between technology and space quality? And what amount of undesirability of space quality is related to technology?- Could promotion of identity and the quality of Iranian dwellings be affected by using the potentials of indigenous technology and construction methods?Eventually, taking into account all these factors, we will reach the conclusion that technology is one of the principal elements in increasing quality of designing Iranian housing and these methods which are mentioned briefly in this paper must be taken into consideration.

Urban environment is complex, dynamic, and versatile. It is considered as a source of development that requires high capacity management. The urban good governing pattern is defined as the participatory process of development that allows all the beneficiaries such as the government, NGOs and civil society to find solutions for urban problems. In this pattern, the direct executing responsibility of the urban management decreases and more opportunities for bottom-up planning and control by NGOs and public institutions are provided. This article aims to Measure the level of public participation in urban management of Yasouj based on urban good governing pattern. It has also examined the significant relationship between the indicators of urban good governing (transparency and accountability, social justice, civic awareness, social confidence, efficiency and effectiveness) as the independent variables with the dependent variable of public participation in urban management. The research methodology is descriptive-analytic and the data are collected doing survey methods by questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS. The article sample size was calculated 320 persons by using the formula of Cochran. The results showed high tendency among Yasuj citizens to participate in urban management related activities (development, environmental, welfare, and urban services activities). Pearson’s test was used to examine the meaningful relation of public participation both from subjective viewpoint and in urban management of Yasuj city. Taking into account the result of the test (0.000 <P), the significant relation was confirmed; as the test results was less than significant level in the test, that is 0.01 (a = 0.01). Thus, there is a significant relation between citizens' attitude and their participation in urban management affairs. Four indices were used to test the level of participation from objective viewpoint: Urban income and expenditure, supervision and criticism on the performance of urban management, membership in social foundations and organizations, and status of cooperation and participation in urban planning. The results in this regard showed low level of participation from objective viewpoint so that the majority of the citizens had no participation; and only 18.05% reported to have high level of participation. The results concerning correlation test of decent urban governance and public participation was positive and direct in the variables in such a way that, the higher the rate of independent variables (decent urban governance), the higher the rate of participation of citizens in urban management. Among the said criteria, the citizenship awareness showed strong and significant relation with the variables of urban management (about 80%). However, correlation of other criteria with urban participation variables was not considerable.

Every-day life of citizens includes a range of communication and social interactions. The size, density, and configuration of urban physical environment affect the psychological and social experiences and behaviors of urban dwellers. Citizens' familiarity with the location of residences is a result of education and experience, thus having different sense of place among people living in different textures and cities is the result of different experience too. This paper aims to address the relationship between the accumulation of memories and culture on the quality of perceptions, mental image and vitality of the citizens In order to help the managers, planners, urban designers and policy makers to be effective in improving the connection of citizens with their residence environment through public participation in formulating future development outlooks.As a geographical community, public space has a certain position in the urban structure. As a social community, public space is a meeting place for different purposes. Central to the notion of public space are its claims to be democratic and accessible. The meaning of places is defined through their identity and more specifically through the harnessing of the traditions, memories and historicity held by them. Social interaction connects public space to physical security. Many public realms in the city are time-dependent in their nature. During the daytime, markets, parks and streets might be attractive and inclusive urban areas, but during the nighttime they may turn into urban areas of fear. The urban landscape is something that we see, but it is also something that is produced by stories. There are many aesthetic, economic, emotional and nostalgic ties to the urban environment. Many meanings of signs and symbols are part of our history and identity. Human behavior in urban space is influenced by subjective knowledge of the environment. It is possible to transfer this knowledge using such kinds of materials as novels, diaries, biographies, poems, photographs, paintings and films. These sources of material help to understand the deep, subjective and complex relationships between individuals, groups, places and landscapes.In this study, Chamran Street in Shiraz was selected as the case study. Then the environmental factors impressing the visitors were collected and analyzed. The reason of choosing Chamran Street was due to its importance in current and future urban identity of Shiraz, its dynamism, diversity of functions and activities, and its role in increasing urban vitality. The results indicated that activity and meaning were of more important factors than those physical elements, so more attention is required to be paid on improving social and recreational activities. Any effort to improve physical environment should be accomplished with increasing various activities and empowering urban image and legibility for users. This would lead to improving identity, collective memories, and livability.

After the Islamic revolution occurred in early 1980s in Iran, planning for improvement of housing condition in rural areas became one the most important concerns for the Iranian governments due to the incommensurate and substandard housing in rural areas and several development plans were employed. Therefore, rural access to financial resources is one of the major categories that can lead to sustainable development in rural communities and since the end of the third development plan, the government has allocated these funds to the villagers and has given the micro-credit to them in great scale to achieve this goal, but the question is that “how much did these funds improve the life quality in rural areas?". This note aims to provide procedural information, additional to that contained in the Council’s adopted SPG on affordable housing, on making an application for planning permission for local needs of affordable housing in or adjacent to villages by Housing Improvement Funds.In the present research, several ideas such as the role of micro-credit have been studied on the Improving of rural life quality in four dimensions of social, economic, physical and environmental. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effects of the credits on above dimensions. Data collection used in the study is “library and field method” (questionnaires, interviews and observation). Data collection methodology is descriptive-analytical research (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Friedman test, linear regression, coefficient correlation and Willcoxon test). The sample size consists of the villages above 20 households in rural area of Mo'jezat rural district who received micro-credit from 2005 to 2011, and the project covered about 1428 households that were selected using classification and probability sampling. Cochran method was used to determine sample size which was estimated to be 225 household. Among the 4 factors examined in this process, the most important factor was the physical aspect or the obtained results in this research show that the micro-credit has the most effect on the physical aspect and the least effect on the economic and its indicators.

Geo-tourism is geographical tourism that implicitly relies on geology and geomorphology characteristics as a ground for human activities and geographical features. So Geo-tourism mission compared to other sustainable tourisms is to preserve geographical characters of a place. Geo-tourism involves different aspects of experience of travel instead of emphasizing on one special aspect of traveling experiences like environment, culture and etc. Thus in addition to introduction of accurate capabilities of a geomorphologic place for attraction of tourists, Geo-tourism tries to increase tourist knowledge and it leads to accompaniment by local individuals in process of visiting geomorphologic places to the satisfaction of tourists. On the other hand, the journey should be useful in improvement of local people life and finally it should be employed in best manner without any damages. The purpose of Geo-tourism should be manifested in sustainability of total region and preservation of geographical characteristics of the visited place and it should lead to empowerment and increase of geomorphologic areas including environment, cultural heritage and welfare of the residents providing ground for sustainable development of touristic area. By this approach, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate a number of existing Geosites of Kandovan village by using the scientific and value added models. Kandovan is located at 62 km South West of Tabriz in Osku County. Kandovan is one of the three rocky villages in the world with this advantage that still there is life. Despite its geo-tourism potential, and being located in the western slopes of Sahand Mountain, Kandovan possesses archeological resources, the climatic and geomorphologic phenomena. But still it does not have a right position inside and outside of the country. Therefore, in the line of the goals of this paper, the data have been collected by library resources and field operations and have been analyzed by scientific value and value-added methods. Ecological and aesthetic aspects, cultural, economic and scientific values of the studied geosites have been investigated quantitatively in this research. The results show that the scientific value of the existing geosites is higher than their value added. It indicates a lack of directed investment in establishing infrastructure, introduction of the geo-tourism phenomena and inattention of domestic agencies for organizing tours. It was also identified that rocky homes, in terms of value added and scientific value, have higher priorities than any other existing geosites due to the aesthetic aspect and attractiveness of these houses.