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Considering the nature of place which includes both inside and outside characteristics, as essential parts of existence, a city cannot be imagined without nature. Natural elements determine the character of urban form and they can be recognised as the primary components of the urban form configuration. Based on this leading point, the traditional city of Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdistan province, located in the western part of Iran, is examined to reveal the nature of interaction between the city's urban form and its natural setting through time. Drawing on document analysis and observation of existing built form and its natural context, this paper highlights how the traditional city has been forming and changing through time. The results present evidences of how people related to nature and how the overall spatial principles of the city's traditional core were shaped on the basis of ideas stemming from the natural order while culture shapes the details of the place's structure.

Urban greenspaces play a key role in the health and wellbeing and quality of life of residents. Several studies have documented the physiological, environmental and social benefits of parks and formal greenspaces for urban dwellers. The contribution of informal greenspaces and their potential uses and benefits, however, have received very little attention in extant research. Informal greenspaces are found in a variety of forms and types including vacant lots, railway or waterway verges and brownfields. Drawing on an empirical study of Upper Stony Creek in Sunshine North, Melbourne, this paper examines how residents perceive and use informal greenspaces. Upper Stony Creek is a concreted drainage channel with limited access from the residential area. An informal greenspace of around 40,000 square metres is located towards the east of the Creek. Drawing on systematic observations and interviews with local residents, the study examined how residents engaged with and benefited from the presence of informal greenspaces in their neighbourhood. The findings showed that not only did residents use the accessible greenspace, but also they were using channel verges fenced-off at the time. The activities varied based on season and the level of maintenance. Dog walking was the main activity conducted in the informal greenspace, and the lack of regular maintenance, perceptions of unsafety and littering were among the most critical concerns regarding its use. The paper concludes by recommending ways informal greenspaces can be managed and improved to add value to urban environments and fully capitalise on their potential as integral parts of neighbourhoods that can contribute to liveability.

As public spaces are often designed based on adults’ behavioural patterns and perceptions, children’s perceptions and physical needs based on their body size have received less attention in both the design of urban spaces and urban studies. Focusing on the interpretive reproduction theory, this study aims to investigate children’s perceptions of urban spaces. Using behaviour and mental mapping, this paper examines children’s activities in public spaces as well as their mental images of such spaces. Behaviour mapping was conducted over 37 days on the Zrêbar Lake Waterfront in Kurdistan. Sketches drawn by 36 children were then analysed to identify children’s perceptions of the Waterfront. Unlike conventional methods in which children’s demands are determined through caregivers, this study focuses on engagement with children. Results indicate that two main factors of actualised environmental affordances (AEA) and safety-conscious parenting practices (SPP) have a significant influence on children’s freedom of movement (CFM) and consequently children’s activities in public spaces.

This paper reports on research into social activity in commercial/retail centres in Australian low-density suburbs. While low-density suburbs have been criticised for declining vitality and sociability, some commercial/retail precincts still thrive there. This study sought to determine the relationship between the physical qualities of the built environment and social activity in such thriving suburban neighbourhood centres. Three areas in Geelong, Victoria, were studied as representative of three common forms of Australian suburban commercial/retail centre. First, behavioural observations identified which of the three centres was the most vital and sociable. Next, semi-structured interviews with users of that centre who resided in its containing suburb explored perceptions of the environment to identify the physical features that contributed to its social affordances. The findings suggest that diversity of uses is key to the vibrancy of commercial centres. Walkability, perceptions of safety and physical qualities such as landscaping, good pedestrian pathways and pavement dining were also found to contribute to vitality. Importantly, it appears that in neighbourhoods with high transient populations, residents do not associate these types of socially active environments with sense of community.

Urban greening is a popular nature-led regeneration policy based on the assumption that provision of greenspace improves the health and wellbeing of proximate communities. Entangled within these objectives are environmental justice principles that seek to remedy historical and contemporary concerns related to contaminated areas of post-industrial cities. This paper draws upon findings from an evaluation study of an urban greening project in a socio-economically disadvantaged suburb with a history of toxic contamination. Our aim is to understand if better and more greenspace derives improved social outcomes over time. Central to this inquiry is an attention to resident perspectives of the environment before and after greening to understand if meeting expectations of regeneration and environmental justice impacts upon subjective wellbeing.

Neighbourhood centres are places of interactions for residents of a neighbourhood. The diversity of uses and building functions may affect the pattern of interactions occurring in neighbourhood centres. In spite of the advantages of mixed land use developments, which have been repeatedly mentioned in the planning literature, few studies have investigated the effect of diversity of uses on the patterns of activity and vitality in neighbourhood centres. This paper utilises a qualitative approach to the study of land uses in suburban neighbourhood centres in Geelong, Australia. The primary methodology used in this research is recording and mapping users’ activities through behavioural observation. This study aims to evaluate the complexities of the pattern of activities occurring in neighbourhood centres in regard to building functions and uses. The method of inquiry in this research investigates how the arrangements and diversity of uses in neighbourhood centres can promote, affect or mitigate the social life of neighbourhoods, generate a sociable atmosphere, attract a diversity of users and create a nightlife. A better understanding of how neighbourhood environments influence the social life of neighbourhoods can provide academics and professionals in planning and urban design with sound evidence on which to base future research and design.

Australian suburban streets have long been noted for their lack of vitality. As utilitarian and car-orientated spaces where social interactions are discouraged, such streets are arguably key contributors to social isolation in Australian suburbs. Conversely, where suburban streets are lively social spaces, third places such as pavement cafes appear to be key elements. This chapter tests this premise by investigating three suburban streets that contain third places such as eateries and other local businesses. Through documents and maps of the residents’ activities and behaviour, this study identifies the popular zones of activity in these streets, and investigates which of their physical characteristics create not just social spaces but psychologically comfortable ‘third places’ for human interaction. Through observation of activities and behavioural mapping in the three streets it has been found that zones of activity have been mostly shaped around cafes and food stores and more than half these activities initiated from eateries with pavement tables, suggesting their critical roles in creating such third places. This chapter then goes into depth to investigate how the physical qualities of commercial streets; the width of the pavements, degree of personalization, use of soft edges and greenery – contribute to pavement dining and the broader social transformation of neighbourhood streets into third places.

Today, urbanites are less involved in local communities which has resulted in a claim that the significance of local communities and the role of space and neighbourhood layout in the creation of local communities has been exaggerated. Such claims imply that feeling a sense of community among neighbourhood’s residents or an attachment to the community is not a value to the neighbourhood. Community research has developed a few indices for evaluating the sense of community and community attachment, but has not focused on the significance of a sense of community in neighbourhoods. The aim of this paper is to explore and review the significance of the sense of community, community attachment and neighbouring in the context of neighbourhoods. This review suggests that feeling a sense of community, attachment to community and neighbouring relationships can increase the feeling of safety and security, residential satisfaction, community identity, civic participation and mental health and well-being.

Today, our understanding and experience of heritage sites have been reframed by the advent of social media and the ubiquitous use of smartphones that offer more participatory ways of interacting with heritage. The lifespan of a heritage site is highly concerned with how it is understood and experienced by visitors. This study aims to investigate a heritage site and its participatory culture through the lens of social media and how a certain heritage site could be understood by these online networks. The historic city of Shiraz packed with several monumental buildings and heritage sites has been chosen as the case study of this research. Three social media platforms of Flickr, 500px and Instagram were investigated during 2015 and their photos of Shiraz were downloaded for analysis. The analysis of more than 186 images from these websites has provided an opportunity to investigate how the historical district of Shiraz is remembered in the eyes of social media users. Based on the initial photo audits, Nasir-al-Molk Mosque with more than 74 published images was the most published building and therefore was selected for an in-depth photo survey analysis. The Nasir-al-Molk Mosque images were studied regarding the physical and spiritual qualities of its building and how they contribute to its popularity among social media photographers.

The ubiquitous of smartphones and access to social media provide a new way of interacting with urban environments. The archived and shared images on social media not only indicate users’ interest but also they embody what users want to remember from a city. To investigate the evaluative image of a city through published images, Melbourne CBD has been selected as a case study. An in-depth survey of 460 geotagged photos from CBD in Flickr, 500px and Instagram (during 2014), provides an opportunity for city planners and urban designers to transform the image of a city to be more likeable, meaningful.

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.

Sense of community and social life are two key concepts related to social cohesion, which have been the subject of extensive studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and built environment. Social life studies have been mostly conducted in the built environment discipline focusing on city centres; while sense of community studies were mostly the target of sociologists and psychologists focusing on neighbourhoods. As a result, the role of the built environment on the sense of community and social life of neighbourhoods is considered as a missing gap in the literature. This paper, through defining the concepts of social life and sense of community, aims to develop a conceptual framework for further implementation in future research. Accurate implication and interpretation of the concepts show that neighbourhoods can include the sense of community in the residential environment and the social life in the commercial environment. This is because residential environments are where residents’ requirements can be met through their commitment to the community and commercial environments are the fulcrum of interaction and communication.