International Journal of

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According to several types of research, one of the most important issues and principles of sustainable development that urban professionals pay attention to it recently is Just City. One aspect of Justice in cities, spatial justice, has particular significance by Unequal and discordant Expanding in cities regarding creating unequal areas. On the other hand, the urban spatial structure affects the equal distribution of elements and services. If this structure is devoid of justice ideology will lead to a complex social crisis and spatial issues as spatial conflict. Accordingly, this study aims to analyse the spatial justice and structure in the case of Yazd city to know how they influence each other. Spatial justice is examined from the view of "Equality of opportunity". Involved criteria are "equality", "Physical diversity", "human diversity" and "urban spaces", and spatial structure based on “Space Syntax” technique with "integration", "control", "connect" and " intelligibility " parameters. These criteria are Scored and analysed by FDAHP techniques and GIS. The result shows favourable status in the Central District, and as getting away from the disadvantaged downtown District increased. On the other hand, the spatial structure analysis reveals the most spatial coherent analogue the north-south axis with a little depth and isolated District (Spatial segregations) have located in the corners and edges of the city. Results from the superposition of these two analysis layers show a compatibility relation between the spatial structure of Yazd and the pattern of justice distribution except in the central and historical centre.

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The key issue in the design of today’s living spaces is the cognitive and socio psychological gap towards individual and social needs of today's human. Place attachment as a quality of urban space has a kind of product-oriented output and requires careful attention to the stages and process of attachment. In the analysis of this process, familiarity with cognitive structures and novel research methods in the field of cognitive psychology, provide designers with valuable information. The main aim of this study is to investigate the role of cognitive psychology approach in the process-oriented study of place attachment. The research tries to address the issue that "how does the process-oriented model is realized in place attachment with an approach of cognitive psychology?". Research is a combination of qualitative (interview) and quantitative (questionnaire) methods. In order to determine the appropriate number of participants, first a pretest was performed as a pilot study on 40 residents of the neighborhood and after the estimation of variance for the initial sample (S2 ) at the confidence level of 95%, the number of the sample was increased to 297. The findings of this study suggest that the most influential criterion on the attachment of residents, is the affect (0.97) dimension; Behavior (0.86) is the second and cognition (0.74) is the third one identified in terms of process dimensions. This research introduces influential criteria in the promotion of affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of the place attachment process and also investigates the effectiveness degree of each dimension. 

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Undoubtedly, public spaces can be considered as an essential factor, which could contribute to urban arrangement, create and maintain a strong local center and enhance the quality of superior environment and the sense of citizenship. Moreover, integrity has always been the most basic structural qualities and one of the key principles of cities. Integrated urban spaces exhibit the integrated structure of spatial organization in a city where, not only conjunction and space functions are considered, but also identity finds its place in the complex urban system. Therefore, the processes of planning, designing and construction of urban spaces could be helpful for solving structural problems in urban models such as lack of integrity in cities and their spatial analysis. The main purpose of this study is to present a conceptual model of an integrated network for urban spaces in the process of decision-making. Undoubtedly, such networks that strengthen the structure and integrity of a city bring about socio-economic growth and prosperity for inhabitants. Therefore, this study seeks to propose a conceptual model for developing integrated urban spaces network. The main research methods are content analysis and inductive reasoning. The main approach adopted in the analysis and design is that of "living community" in New Urbanism movement. The results reveal that urban spaces are located in a logic network as transects, and to achieve spatial integrity, the continuity of transverse parts of the city must be maintained, as provided in the form of a continuity matrix.

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Courtyard geometry plays an important role in the amount of received solar radiation, also heating and cooling energy consumption of buildings. Considering this geometry for finding its proper proportion and orientation is significant to increase indoor thermal comfort, and as a result reduce the amount of energy consumption. This paper mainly focuses on a dormitory courtyard in Yazd and investigate the effects of it’s different proportions and orientations on the dormitory energy demand to reduce energy consumption. A computer software (EnergyPlus) was utilized to conduct the survey on base model which was obtained from existing university student dormitories in Yazd in a hot-dry climate of Iran. The findings indicated that the proportions and orientations of the courtyard dormitories affect the cooling and heating loads. Also, the outcomes indicated that the use of university student’s courtyard dormitory with the proportion of 3/7 (width to length) and the orientation along east-west axis has the lowest required cooling and heating loads and could reduce the total energy consumption by 3.4 % compared with the most inappropriate courtyards based on their proportion and orientation.

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Functional and structural changes of regional system are ongoing spatial changes that form patterns of spatial organization, depending on dominant regional forces and factors. Spatial structure of West Azerbaijan province experienced significant changes during 15 years; thus, the present research aim to investigate the manner of spatial distribution of two variables of population and activity, and correlation of these variables with spatial structure of the province during the years from 1996 to 2011. Quantitative method was employed for this aim and urban rank-size index was used to analyze settlement pattern of West Azerbaijan province; Kernel density and Moran method was used to analyze population data; general and local Moran data were used to analyze activity data; and regression method was used to see the degree of correlation between these variables. The results showed that spatial structure of west Azerbaijan was monocentric in 1996 while the of spatial distribution trend of the population and activity indicated decentralization tending toward clustered spatial pattern during 15-year period of time, due to high correlation between the given variables. In other words, some kinds of decentralized convergence took place. Such trend would change the spatial structure in West Azerbaijan province and needs to be properly oriented in the future planning of urban and regional development.

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Urban planning rules and considering land use regarding faults can change the consequences of natural hazard such as earthquake. Vulnerability risk is increasing in Region 1 because of existence of the north fault, steep slopes and continuous construction of high-rise buildings. It is clear that Region 1’s Master Plan shouldn’t be prepared without considering natural hazard such as earthquake. This study targets two main goals, first, to assess the degree of land use vulnerability to seismic risk and second, to classify areas based on their vulnerability degree. Nine indicators were extracted from previous studies to analyze the vulnerability of land use in Master Plan of Region 1, Tehran. According to different features of each indicator a score from 1 to 4 was allocated for each feature. The vulnerability degree of 181 areas were shown using Categorical Principle Component Analysis (CATPCA) in which areas were divided into four categories and the final result was visualized. The main results of this study showed that more about 50% of the areas were located in the highly-at-risk region. It was concluded that increase in the building density, number of floors, and distance from open spaces would be resulted in higher risk of earthquake damage. The major practical contribution of the present research was that it provided evidence to show that much focus required on reconsidering seismic risk in the future plans.

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The external walls are regarded as an important source for the thermal exchange between the outside and inside of a building. Despite the significance of building walls for energy savings, a large body of research has focused mainly on thermal comfort, environmental impacts, and economic costs of residential buildings. However, few researchers have addressed the thermal performance of common building materials. The clay block has attracted a lot of attention as the important building material in temperate and humid climate. The present study aimed to study the thermal performance of three clay block external walls systems in temperate and humid climate by increasing trapped air thickness between internal and external walls of buildings. FLUENT software was employed to simulate and calculate the thermal characteristics, which were extracted and compared to the calculated data according to chapter 19 of "Iranian National Building Regulations". The results indicated that the air trapped between the internal and external the leaves of cavity walls considerably influenced thermal resistance. In addition, the new combined wall system could considerably save the energy, compared to the existing wall systems. In conclusion, the energy goals can be fulfilled by improving the layout of the walls.

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To date, researchers from various disciplines have studies leisure time; most have focused on quality of leisure activity, psychological benefits of leisure, spiritual effect, thereby neglecting the effect of social classes on features and quality of the selected place. Third place is defined as a location outside of home or work that allows for social interaction and emotional support, regardless of levels and social classes, ethnic and racial differences. While it seems that the presence of such places in our society has a significant relationship with social classes; in the sense that different levels of social classes are more apt to form distinct number and types of third places. The current research tries to investigate the relationship between different social setting and people identification of third place, for spending leisure time. People attach identifications or meanings to these third places based on the type of needs met for the individual by these places.

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Informal settlement as a global urban phenomenon encounters different social, physical and economic shortcomings. These fabrics especially in cities of the global south experience an escalating gap with developed urban areas. In this regard, faltering economy plays a major contribution in continuity of poverty and exclusion. In Iran, Empowerment plan could not lead to favorable and stable results which has mainly been related to stereotypic, homogenizing and dehumanizing viewpoints to current empowerment plans. As regards the ultimate effectiveness of place branding becomes true in economic context and these settlements are one of suitable candidates for branding, the main aim of this study is improving economic empowerment plans realization for informal settlements through integration urban planning with place branding process to determine more efficient strategies for falak-e-din informal neighborhood by its identity and discovering how place branding, economic empowerment and place identity have conceptual, practical relations with each other to signify this integration. The method of present study is mainly qualitative which is best to cognition of place complexities. Falak-E-Din settlement, has been selected as the case study because it benefits from place market maker advantages and yet encounters the threat of identity crisis. Surveying practical and theoretical facets of Results show place branding with a focus on marketing view is trying to use all aspects of the place(as a complete identity) to draw the image of economic prosperity through comprehensive branding strategy. The findings from analysis of gathered data from inhabitants(observation, interview and archival data) by SWOT and evaluation through brand creation process in Falak-E-Din quarter by ANP ( Analytic Network Process) based on evaluation criteria- reveal the best alternative for creating Falak-E-Din quarter brand is to provide brand strategies based on the brand identity which is built with an emphasis on quarter human factors. Accordingly brand strategies are codified at four main steps to create chosen brand identity: create direct and indirect job opportunities, physical elicitation of place personality with execution of physical components of the brand identity, physical complementary proceedings, and eventually marketing proceedings which include final actions that lead the place to its economic purposes.

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This study was done with the aim of identifing and prioritizing the supportive housing affordability indicators based on residents` perspective, this aim is practical and our research method is descriptive-analytical. Regarding the nature of the subject and the indicators studied, the current approach to this research is a survey method that first, by analyzing the content of research carried out in different countries, the affordability indicators of supportive housing are extracted and then based on this Indices, a questionnaire was designed. This questionnaire was distributed in the statistical community. The statistical population is residents of Mehr housing in Babolsar. 340 residents were selected by random cluster sampling from the whole (2300 residents). Data was analyzed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis showed a 8-factor measurement model that two factors were eliminated due to their low impact. These factors that determine affordability of supportive housing base on residents` perspective, In order of preference, are: physical comfort, Elderly and disabled people facilitations, Green spaces’ landscape, Intra-housing characteristics, Open spaces efficiency, and social interactions. The regression method was used to investigate the relationship between these factors, which indicates high dependence (0.85) of physical comfort factor (as dependent variable) and Intra-housing characteristics. In future researches, it is necessary to evaluate the measures of supportive housing affordability indicators in different regions of the country.

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Over the last few decades, some newly developed areas in the city of Isfahan have had serious problems in providing such urban design qualities as legibility, and this has led to various problems for the citizens like difficulty in way-finding, orientation or addressing. In order to solve this problem and enrich the legibility of newly developed areas, planners and designers should utilize appropriate principles extracted from the inhabitants' cognition and expectations. This paper attempts to understand how people form their cognitive maps in urban areas and find their way within urban places. Hence, it tries to identify and evaluate different kinds of urban elements (the most important elements which provides legibility) by using casual-comparative methods on the basis of such factors as the reason of being distinctive, the type, context, function, adjacency, heritage value and type of the adjacent route that residents of Isfahan have used in shaping their cognitive maps. The findings of this research showed that the most important characteristics which affect the distinctiveness of urban landmarks in the citizens cognitive maps include: having distinctive form in their surrounding environment; being located along the urban main streets or near the junctions; being established in a central area or having heritage value; having such urban functions or land uses as tourism, commercial, leisure, religious or transportation.

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The aim of evaluating and studying the creative city indicators of the city of Qazvin is to determine the creativity trend of this city during the past years and to recognize the dominant field of creativity for this city. Therefore, this study has tried to analyze the creative city indicators about the city of Qazvin by using “descriptive-analysis” method as well as applying secondary data, TOPSIS model, AHP model and SPSS software. First, 13 indicators have been collected to determine the creativity trend from2009 to 2015, then the current trend of creativity in recent years has been obtained using quantitative models. Regardless of the year 2009 and the years before that, the best rank belongs to 2013 with 0.3228 scores. Generally, the creativity trend has decreased with a gentle slope in recent years. In the following sections, within introducing the dominant field of creativity among the five investigated fields, this conclusion has been made that the city of Qazvin has potentials to move toward a creative city.

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Because of the differences between indoor and outdoor thermal condition, preparing some outdoor thermal indices is a way to understand and categorize the outdoor thermal sensation. The aim of these indices is not to provide thermal comfort - as it is the aim of indoor indices. Instead, they are provided to analyze outdoor thermal sensation to help architects, landscape architects and urban designers in design procedure to provide the most possible tolerable thermal condition in outdoor places such as urban public spaces. This article is the result of some field studies have been done in 2010 - 2012 in five different climates: hot semi humid (Ahvaz, Iran), tropical (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), hot-arid (Kashan, Iran), moderate-arid (Tehran, Iran) and cold (Sheffield, UK) in their worst thermal period. The main question in this research is: which outdoor thermal index is appropriate for a specific climate? And how much it is accurate to evaluate outdoor thermal sensation especially in different levels of cold stress and heat stress condition? In each field study the weather data including temperature, humidity and wind speed, are collected by two portable Kestrel weather stations to show weather condition in local and microclimate levels. People's behavior in outdoor spaces is observed to understand their reaction to the different thermal conditions. A nominal observation scale is used for people’s age, health, clothes, activity and exposure time. Outdoor thermal indices that are used in this research are: Humidex, WBGT (wet bulb globe temperature), TSI (tropical summer index), Summer Outdoor Comfort Zone, WCET (wind chill equivalent temperature), THI (temperature humidity index) and UTCI (universal thermal climate index). The results show that outdoor thermal indices may have not the same explanation for the same thermal condition. Some of them are more appropriate for some specific condition while others are not. At last it would be summarized that they have acceptable sensitivity to temperature but most of them need to become more sensitive to humidity and air velocity.

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Power plants with complex technology have various gradations in design process so that this level in the current time by maintaining the goals of sustainability and sustainable development have a critical importance. These buildings require to be sustainable according to their complexity to provide the finance and discrete budgets for functional needs, meanwhile to design solutions to avoid creating pollution and the reduction of energy should be careful and they are in their life cycle which have a social function. These solutions are possible to offer providing a method in design. Focusing on interventional and unique procedures in design can be very efficient. The present research is applicable with the aim to emphasize and recognize the importance of prioritizing in selecting different areas in combined cycle power plants based on the parameters of sustainable development and responds to the question on what priority should be set in the areas of combined cycle power plants,while observing the principles of sustainable development in the direction of control and decrease of economic, social and environmental risks, describes the infrastructures of sustainable development in the areas of combined cycle. Therefore while addressing senior managers, advisors and contractors ,has presented a list with the consultation of the experts and in the second stage through scrolling using questionnaire and survey from experts and AHP software analysis among consulting companies managers, contractors and professionals the criteria were prioritized in hierarchical method. The economic-functional criteria with rank 0.541 have been in the first priority of attention form the experts’ choice and considering the effect of these criteria on the choices, the choice of steam in combined cycle power plants was placed in the first priority with final weight 0.313 and the gas area was determined in the second priority with final weight 0.266. This was also true in the sensitivity test. Thus paying attention to the functional criteria in order to gain economic productivity in the steam area was defined in the priority of attention.

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The "Urban Village Approach" is one of the most appropriate ways to eliminate recent urban problems, including social,
environmental, cultural, and economic shortcomings. Although the urban village approach is generally proper to resolve these
types of flaws, its combination with the democratic concept of urban design can definitely provide more effective solutions. So
at first, this paper aims to present a theoretical combination of these two approaches in the form of recommended principles
and criteria, and then attempts to introduce a hypothetical wasteland for illustrating the practical aspects of it through design
suggestions. A major part of the achievements of this paper is based on theoretical and empirical findings obtained from
comparisons and descriptions, but in order to achieve more tangible results, the practical aspects of findings are proven by
displaying 3D designs and schemes. Consequently, these proposed principles and criteria can be utilized in designing a
democratized urban village form that finally leads to some vital qualities, such as flexibility, inclusiveness, localism, diversity,
vitality, naturality, identity, etc. These qualities, in an appropriate and consistent relation with the existing contexts, will also
bring some desired concepts within, like justice, equality, freedom, and democracy to the urban and rural areas and
neighborhoods.

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Postmodernism is a very ambiguous term. It attracted many researchers from different fields of knowledge in the late 1960s. This article explains intertextuality as a critical means to derive its concepts and components in order to understand the hidden layers of meaning in postmodern pluralist ideology. Variable thoughts of postmodern architecture have been divided into two categories—Historicist and Deconstruction—to be able to detect and classify the inner layers of meaning in postmodern architecture.
The authors seek to answer these questions:
1. How can we achieve the intertextual relationship between Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction?
2. How can we define Historicist postmodern architecture and Deconstruction into the diachronic and synchronic axes?
The results show that Historicist postmodernism uses objective signifiers and moves only along the diachronic axis. This group only imitates the past and its elements have humor and irony in the works. Due to the lack of attention to the synchronic axis, some parts of intertextuality are missing. These include the uncertainty of meaning and multilayered texts, which are principles of intertextuality. Deconstruction moves in both the diachronic and synchronic axes and, unlike Historicist ones, multi-meaning, multi-valued, and multi-layered features are seen in the works. They use both previous and contemporary texts. The method of data analysis is based on causal comparison and the rational analysis of authors. This article is a logical reasoning research that uses reasoning to explain relationships and understand the components of a subjective system after gathering information and understanding the theory of intertextuality.

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Urban planning has received tremendous public attention in the last few years. Energy cost, environmental issues, traffic congestion and the feeling of lack of belonging in the cities are among the factors that have contributed to the development of pedestrian areas. These public spaces provide opportunities for shopping, entertainment, eating facilities and gatherings where people can experience urban life as pedestrians. Over decades, the concept of pedestrianisation has become part of social urban life in the developed countries. However, developing countries such as Iran have just recently paid attention to pedestrianisation and walking as a mode of transportation. The historic core of Tehran, the capital of Iran, embraces significant tangible and intangible values. For a long time, enhancing the mobility in the area has been the important concern of the urban developers; pedestrianisation is their recently solution to this issue in this site. To study and evaluate this project, a literature and field research have been performed through investigating the valid documentations and using questionnaires and interviews with the locals and visitors. Taking advantage of the Historic Urban Landscape approach, the results of the field and bibliographic research have been evaluated and recommendations have been made for improving the pedestrian-oriented areas in the historic context. The findings of this research show that converting a street to a pedestrian zone does not mean to simply ban the vehicles from entering the site. On the contrary, there are essential bases in the site such as multifunctional places, human-scale dimensions or activities during the whole day and night that should be taken into consideration to provide a suitable space for pedestrians including citizens and tourists. Pedestrian zones include different functions such as residential, social, cultural, tourists, physical, economic, etc. on various dimensions and scales which affect the whole city design and management. Moreover, these spaces should be supported by variety of facilities like parking lots, public transportation and equipment for people with disabilities. Assessing the impacts of pedestrianisation in Tehran Grand Bazaar can pave the way for future studies with the aim of conserving unique features of the historic sites within an urban development process.

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In the architectural design, designers are focused on the early stages of the design process or conceptual design. The ultimate goal of this stage is to find a solution for an existing problem, investigate design space, or explore an idea. This stage conventionally begins with sketches and diagrams to explore ideas and solutions; the ambiguity and vagueness of conventional freehand sketching can be a source of creativity.
Nowadays, with the advances in digital technology, there are attempts to integrate digital tools into the conceptual design in order to construct a digital design medium in the architectural education. Recent developments in CAAD software shows a shift in focus toward conceptual design interface; but these tools have not developed and still fail to offer an appropriate design environment for sketching; So application of digital tools in the early stages of design, has created problems and challenges especially regarding creativity. The problem is that why digital sketching could not yet replace the conventional freehand sketching. Therefore, this research focuses on the early stages of the design process and aims to investigate the current situation of digital sketching and its related discussions and challenges in architectural design education, also, study the current sketching tools in the architectural schools and tendency of instructors and their students to use digital sketching in real world. This research has a qualitative approach and a survey has conducted via an online questionnaire. Findings show that, there are attempts to study and propose interfaces and programs to enhance digital systems or new ways of working with them in order to support creativity and sketching. Also, findings indicate that the professors yet doubt over digital tools, but there is a tendency to use these tools among educators and their students if these tools can meet educational demands.

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This Paper attempts to investigate the patterns of land cover changes and also the process of urban growth in Shiraz Metropolitan Area. Since detailed information of current urban processes is required for future developments and managements of urban areas, this study utilizes remote sensing data and landscape metrics, as useful tools to gather information on urban growth and dynamics, in order to examine the spatial pattern of Shiraz metropolitan area (SMA) from 1986 to 2014. Since, the northwestern areas of SMA are superior in terms of ecological advantages, analysis of types and patterns of SMA growth were separately examined for each sector (NW, NE, SE, and SW). Five landscape metrics were used to analyze compactness and dispersion of urban patches derived from remotely sensed images. The results showed that over the past 28 years, SMA experienced sweeping changes with unexplainable growth during 1996-2006: a great horizontal expansion with 5.89 percent annual growth rate. After facing great urban sprawl, especially on the edge of the main city in the 96-06 period, periphery rural areas beyond the city borders started growing drastically during last decade. While measuring landscape metrics indicates a process of compactness in the growth patterns of NE, SE and SW areas, NW is going to be more dispersed in the coming years.

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“The urban researches in Iran aren't applicable to the real challenges of Iran’s cities”. In order to examine the mentioned hypothesis, “existing problems of Iran’s cities” and “Iran’s urban researches” are compared by means of the urban news and research journals. The framework analyze method [a kind of qualitative research method] has been used to analyze the data in the form of axial-thematic codes. The findings showed researches conform to problems approximately 78 percent in themes but the importance and preference of both themes and axial codes in researches differ from existing problems, which indicates some researches don't concern problems.