The Evaluation of Environmental Quality criteria in Urban Design Using Citizens' Cognitive Characteristics; (Case Study: Tehran Neighborhoods)

The problem which has been the focus of city constructors and architectures since the beginning of citizenship life is the issue of the nature of environmental quality. This study, with a review of explaining paradigms of environmental quality and by reliance on basic works, has assumed the question of nature of environmental quality an interdisciplinary concept (civic construction, sociology, psychology) and is in seek of explaining perceptive quality factors from citizens' perspective. Since the nature of this study is multidimensional and understanding of its different aspects and answering of its relevant questions bounds researcher both to test present theories and to understand mental world of his or her subjects, therefore, synthetic approach has been applied for methodology of it. It should be mentioned that Delphi method has been applied so as to obtain different indices and factors of the study. To determine the unit of sampling, multiple-stage clustering sampling method has been used in a way that between 22 regions of Tehran municipality, based on their development, first 6 regions were selected and in the next stage all the local states of those 6 regions were listed and then six local states were randomly selected. Size of the sample of this study is 200 persons. The results show that most of the perceptive factors derived from qualitative section of the research conform to factors derived from quantitative section and questionnaire. In other words factors derived from qualitative section are the same as those derived from quantitative factors. The significant point to notice in this section is that some of the derived factors from this section couldn’t be categorized by previous theories but rather they belong to the research community of this study (i.e. local states of Tehran). Thus we can state that the total perceptive criteria of environmental quality of these local states are as follows: legibility, place atmosphere, permeability, peace, tranquility, liveliness, sensational rapture, time sense, civil justice, security, human standard, sociability.