A comparative study of the spatial pattern in rural settlements; The case study of Shalheh-ye Emam Hasan of Abadan and Hadbeh khanafereh of Shadegan

The village is a long-standing form of human settlement that embodies the vernacular pattern of human habitation and innovative ways of adapting to the environment. Village dwellers are the creators of unique cultural landscapes which are looked upon as the heritage for future generations. Therefore recognizing the dominant patterns in rural landscapes has always been of interest to researchers. The spatial organization has considered that human habitats are the direct result of social, economic, political, and institutional processes. By studying and comparing two villages located in southwestern of Iran, the study’s aim is to investigate the spatial pattern and configuration of the rural form and examine the effect of villagerschr('39') lifestyle and livelihood on the formation of those patterns. One of the village case studies is Shalheh-ye Emam Hasan located in Abadan city along the Arvand tidal river which enable the villagers to develop their gardens of palms as far as the tidewater is available. The other one is Hadbeh Khanafreh village in Shadegan city at the edge of Shadegan wetland in which the village dwellers’ livelihood is dominantly based on small livestock farms, keeping water buffaloes within their houses and hunting wetland fauna such as birds and fish. Both villages have similar cultural backgrounds and are inhabited by indigenous Arab tribes but the villages are different in terms of the type of the livelihood and settlement organization. The research method is case modeling and case study benefitting from Geographic Information System (GIS). By applying landscape metrics, the blocking, mass and space system, grain size, spatial distribution and arrangement, physical density, shape of texture patches, and texture connectivity, the spatial patterns of villages were quantitatively studied and analyzed geometrically in two scales of landscape and texture. The comparison of the results demonstrates that despite the similar cultural environment and social context, there are differences in the spatial pattern and configuration of two villages’ textures and landscapes. The dispersed pattern of the houses located in Shalheh is due to the vast area of the village and the rows of the palm grounds which are included in each house and this fact gives rise to the probability of houses accumulation in each block. Meanwhile, the amount of residential texture of Hadbeh is 32% of the village area due to its confinement with the wetland. Similarly, the numbers of building blocks in Shalheh village are twice that of Hadbeh. The building blocks of both villages have relatively similar dimensions. However, in Hadbeh, the building blocks are applied in the larger number of houses. Particularly, in spite of the similar social and cultural environment, residential units in Shalheh village are, on average, larger and owing to the land limitation in Hadbeh, the dwelling houses are smaller. Besides, the results of nearest neighbor distance and the connectivity demonstrate the compact arrangement of the houses in Hadbeh and the scattering distribution of the houses in Shalheh despite their linear form, moreover the studied area in Shahleh village is by far larger than Hadbah while just 1.8% of which is included by village blocks. This study found that rural economy is closely related to the geographical context and settlement order of the village and totally the combination of these factors play an effective role on the formation of the spatial pattern of the rural settlement’s texture. This research shows that although social and cultural factors are very influential on a housing scale, what can further determine the spatial structure and pattern of rural housing is the capacity to exploit the geographical context in favor of livelihood. Due to the economic roots result in formation of the unique structure in both villages, any variations in economy or natural resources involved in the economy of the villages can lead to changes in the structure and pattern of the studied landscapes and have subsequent consequences including social disorders or migration. This highlights the need to understand the spatial pattern of the settlement before any decision making and planning at rural or large scale on the geographical basis. The use of landscape metrics in this study has made it possible to compare those metrics and trace the root causes result in formation of vernacular patterns.