An Analytical Study on Boundaries of Administrative-defined Neighborhoods Using Residents’ Cognitive Maps (Case study: Mashhad Municipality Neighborhoods, Iran)

Subject Areas : Urban Design

Amidoleslam Saghatoleslami ¹ , Seyedeh Negar Hosseinian ² , 3Maryam Behnami Fard ³

1 - Assistant Professor, Department of urban planning, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Branch.
2 - Ph.D. Candidate of Urban & Regional Planning, University Technology Malaysia.
3 - M. Sc. In Urban Design, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Branch.

Received: 2014-01-16 Accepted : 2014-03-07 Published : 2014-06-01

Keywords: Neighborhood, Residents’ perception, Cognitive maps, Administrative-defined Neighbo,

Abstract :

The neighborhood has had a long history in Iranian urbanization. Since urban plans wereintroduced by the authorities to shape urban development in Iran half a century ago, the concept of Iranian traditionalneighborhood has been neglected gradually. The concept of neighborhood has not found the appropriate status inurban design and planning yet. One of the main reasons is that academics, professional urban planners, designersand managers use different definition and no consensus exists on definition of neighborhood. The aim of researchis to compare residents’ perception of their neighborhood boundaries with boundaries of administrative-definedNeighborhoods which municipalities consider. The main hypothesis of the research is fundamental difference betweenthese two views: top- down view from experts and urban managers who see the neighborhood as a spatial unit for cityorganizing and bottom- up view from residents who consider the neighborhood as the place of their social life. TheResearch methodology has been done base on the survey method and an analytical approach has been applied. Thecase study is located in Mashhad city in Iran. Four municipality-defined neighborhoods were selected in various urbanfabrics of the city. Findings indicate that residents’ definition of their neighborhood was influenced by socio-spatialfactors and interaction of these on each other. There is a substantial and fundamental difference between residents’definition of neighborhood and municipality-defined neighborhood. Finally, this study proposes recommendations forthe better definition of administrative neighborhoods in Iran.

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