ANALYZING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC SPACES ON SOCIABILITY POTENTIAL OF CITIES: CASE STUDY OF NOBAHAR STREET, KERMANSHAH, IRAN

Abstract

The street as the pervasive and accessible urban public realm has considerable effects on the sociability potential of cities due to its multidimensional nature, embodying a range of activities from transportation, shopping, walking, and sitting to an urban space letting citizens experience and share social moments together. Hence, the street, by having a dynamic and pervasiveness characteristic, affects and promotes the sociability potential of cities and, subsequently, the quality of daily social life. This research, as a part of an ongoing PhD research at RWTH Achen University, Faculty of Architecture, aims to shed some light on the role of public space, and specifically the street, on the sociability potential of urban spaces. Hence, the purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness level of Nobahar Street on social indicators of space as one of the densest streets in Kermanshah city, Iran. To achieve this purpose, a quantitative research method is assigned to realize this relation in three steps including library research to review the literature of the issue and to assign the indicators of the questionnaire as the second step of the research (data collection). The questionnaire was distributed among 120 citizens from different age groups and different genders, and, finally, in the third step of the research, the gathered data were analyzed by SPSS software. The results of the software show there is a strong relationship between Nobahar Street and its effects on social indicators assigned in the questionnaire.