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Growing urban environments, as a context of complex social, economical, political and cultural relations, require a wide and complex range of approaches, perspectives and solutions to meet today's conditions and consequences of the continuing development process. New ideas on planning and design of cities are required. Confronting these challenges, landscape ecology provides many solutions regarding its definition. On the other hand, urban ecology as a successor of ecology, offers valuable principals for urban development and environmental awareness. According to increasing urbanization, landscape ecology should be more urbanized in future. Therefore, today a new concept of "urban landscape ecology" emerges with yet no single definition. This article first defines the concepts of ecological paradigm and their impact on its alteration in relation to urban landscape. Thereinafter, modified concepts of "urban landscape ecology" and "landscapeoriented ecologic urbanism" are offered. The friction between the definitions of landscape, city and ecology is what empowers urban landscape ecology as a base for planning and design. Such a definition makes landscape architects draw their professional concentration from the suburbs to the city where human systems are to be considered as a part of ecology. Landscape-oriented urbanism suggests three research paths: the evolution of aesthetic perception; a deeper understanding of the role of human in ecology; and learning in action. "Landscape-oriented urbanism" considers the application of processes that facilitate design in naturally and culturally complex and dynamic systems. Therefore, landscape-oriented urbanism is necessarily beyond a new urbanism; since it is faced with problems beyond the urban form and focuses on more complex issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate is one of the most important factors in sustainable architecture and urban design. Climatic conditions have become a strong factor in architectural design process and designers must consider certain principles in that field. An appropriate urban environment has to take the factor of climate into consideration in an efficient way. This will lead to the creation of a better living environment with open, naturally-lit spaces and fresh air movement. An efficient climatic design can have a specific impact on reducing the operating costs of an urban environment. This is specifically significant when considering hat the climatic design principles will help reduce electricity consumption in buildings and improve the environment and strengthen the economy by cutting down the need for fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Using principles of climatic design in urban environmental structures and residential contexts results in better living conditions for residents. The present article specially addresses this issue. It focuses on low-height residential contexts and the solutions for climate conditions in urban environments. This article's hypothesis declares that climatic architectural design guidelines and solutions in low-height residential contexts are closely interrelated in such a way that an efficient climate design could lead to a proper climatic conditions in the environment. "Temperate" climate has been emphasized in the present article because it has two important elements that affect architecture: the amount of humidity and the amount of rain. In temperate climates the traditional architecture has found methods to be adopted based on climate conditions throughout history. To reduce the humidity effects, buildings have been scattered all around and empty spaces have been accommodated around them. This is meant to help the wind spiral through - what will accordingly provide a better air movement in the environment. Also buildings have been built upper than the ground to avoid the soil humidity. To receive the sunlight, buildings have found a proper orient to the south axes, and the best proportion for the forms is considered as 1:1/6 in east-west direction. In order to choose cities in temperate climate with very similar climate conditions, 37 degrees north latitude has been chosen as a basic line. And the cities beside it all around the world with similar conditions have been selected on the basis of most important climatic factors including angle of the sunshine, temperature, humidity, wind conditions and the amount of rain. The selected cities include Washington D.C, Richmond and Virginia Beach in the USA, Antalya in Turkey, Rasht in Iran, Seoul in South Korea and Niigata in Japan. The present research is meant to find answers to the following questions: •What are the main characteristics of residential contexts in selected cities with temperate climate? •What are climate considerations for designing residential contexts in these areas? •How much are architectural designs in line with the city's climate? •What are proper climatic design patterns in low height residential contexts? This article follows a comparative analysis method. Therefore, by analyzing the samples of the contexts of residential areas, the principles on proper climatic types for low-height residential contexts have been identified. A comparative analysis of samples in the research shows that the principles necessary to achieve a suitable climate model in residential contexts include the following guidelines and solutions with specific relations to each other: Decentralized organization of buildings can be considered a necessary solution to obtain a suitable model of climatic design. This can largely lead to other solutions. Scattered buildings help provide better conditions to use natural winds to enhance the quality of the environment. The blowing of wind through empty spaces between blocks reduces the high humidity of the environment. The use of natural light in the building as a fundamental element of a climatic design can be accommodated in low density environments. In high density environments, natural light can be accommodated by organizing east- west axis linear blocks. In compressed urban neighborhood contexts, it is more difficult to organize blocks in east-west axis and that leads to a disadvantaged condition. Landscaping can be used as another design tool. Planting trees at the southern part of the building yard provides shade against sunlight and helps reduce heat in summers. Also trees can act as obstacles in front of cold winter winds. Furthermore, steep roofs beside their application for rainy weather can be a cultural element in architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays more than half of the world's populations live in urban areas. The figure is estimated to increase to about 60 percent by 2020. Therefore, the phenomenon of urbanization has become inevitable today. Despite the many benefits of urbanization, many policy-makers in different countries are warning against the perils of increasing urbanization. They are specifically warning against profound effects of urbanization on environmental issues such as on traditional and conventional relations, preparation and provision of public services and infrastructure problems, proliferation of informal settlements, deterioration of environmental conditions, and increased social problems related to unemployment and others. These problems are increasingly grabbing the attention of researchers in various fields of study, like Life Quality, Quality of Place, and Human Life Improvement in Urban Areas.On the other hand, we should always pay attention to the fact that civil society encompasses a wide range of the cultural-social and occupational groups. Each of these groups according to the type of insight and norms has different criteria for choosing a place to live and work. Therefore, they have also different criteria about satisfaction of the city environmental quality. However, in developing societies, paying equal attention to the demands of all the people is very difficult. But in this research, we emphasize on the differences between the mental image of citizen and planners about urban environmental quality in distressed areas. As was mentioned, when human habitats can yield the greatest utility to man, that meets his expectations. These expectations are defined in all aspects of human life like the environment, society, economy, etc. If any of these factors do not have good qualities in a person's life, they can influence the perception and the level of satisfaction in that individual. As we know, distressed area refers to legal limits of urban life where environmental deterioration and low quality structures cause particular problems for cities. It is normal to see that in these areas, citizens' expectations in relation to quality living environment are unrealistic. Perhaps this is due to the fact that citizens have a non-aligned image of a desired biological space. Therefore, this research, in order to improve environmental quality in urban distressed area, is trying to determine the priority criteria and indicators of environmental quality in urban distressed areas in both the mental images of citizens and urban planners. To achieve this, first of all, the concept of urban environmental quality and its component, deterioration and the features of distressed area in Iran are defined. The next step is to develop the theoretical model for evaluating the level of satisfaction. The model is divided into five levels; each level evaluates the benchmark of one component such as environmental, socio-cultural, economic, physical and management criteria involved in the quality of the environment. In this regard, a questionnaire was designed according to the range of five-point Likert scale (1 < X < 5) to assess the quality of the urban environment. The researchers distributed 378 questionnaires based on the formula of Cochran is distributed between citizens residing in Qazvin distressed area and 42 questionnaires between urban planners who work at municipalities as urban experts as well as university professors. The method used to analyze the data was analytical - descriptive method and SPSS software in data analysis and one-way ANOVA and Duncan grouping test to evaluate and rank components of environmental quality in the urban distressed area. This approach helped with the determination of the value of each criterion and its rank among others. To determine the validity of the research instrument of the questionnaire, the help of professors and experts was sought - all of whom were positive with the reliability of the results. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's alpha test. The value of this coefficient is 0.927 that shows a high reliability. We see in classification criteria and rating on them by citizens that the first priority is managed measures by 2.3 points then economic measures with 2.5 points, physical measures with 2.9 points, environmental and social criteria with 3.2 and 3.3 points are in the next line of priorities. But in urban planner's rating, physical and managed measures with scores of 2.5 and 2.6, environmental and management criteria of 2.7 and 2.6 points, economic and social criteria with 3.0 and 3.1 points show the order of importance.In general summary and conclusion, the results indicate that the first priority in low quality of life in citizens' view involved lack of attention to physical problems and low economic status of residents. This is while in urban planners' approach in urban distressed area environmental standards and management are suffering from the ravages more than the other components. Therefore, the results show the lack of convergence in mental image of citizen and planners to the quality of the urban environment. Therefore, to improve the quality of urban environment, both citizens and planners should take serious steps to draw their viewpoints closer and pay more attention to each other's demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]