Assessment of Residential Environment Quality of Urban Neighborhoods (Case Study: Neighborhoods of Khorramshahr and Ziabari, Rasht)

Introduction From the very beginning of society development and the basic biological complexes, human have tried to take control of their environment in response to one of their most basic innate needs. In this regard, since the purpose of planning is to improve the environment in terms of security, health, beauty, convenience and general welfare, quality of the environment has been considered as one of the key issues in the topics of planning and design. In relation to this concept, the importance of urban residential environments as the main residence of people is increasing day by day, so that in the first place these environments provide important tools for the development of different life indicators such as health, family, work or leisure. Second, lots of people are living or will live in the near future in highly urbanized areas and special attention should be given to the quality of their home environments. Obviously, the identification of the factors affecting satisfaction and dissatisfaction of housing residents can contribute to the analysis of residential status quo, future decisions to enhance the quality of the residence and preventing shortfalls in other places. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the quality of the residential environment in two neighborhoods of Ziabari and Khorramshahr Boulevard in the city of Rasht, as well as to identify and review the indices that have the greatest impact on residential satisfaction of residents according to them. In fact, this study has attempted to investigate the residents' reactions to their home environment in these areas, analyze performance of these neighborhoods in order to create a better environment for living through the objective and subjective dimensions and also determine the residents' satisfaction with the quality of their home environment.   Methodology This research is a descriptive-analytic study. To obtain the relationship between variables with the use of five quality indicators of quality of access, social characteristics of the environment, physical characteristics of the environment, quality of housing unit and communal services, a questionnaire was used. The reliability of the instrument (0.983) was measured by Cronbach's alpha and data were analyzed using SPSS software and statistical methods such as multivariate hierarchical regression analysis (HMR), One-sample T-test and Spearman correlation analysis.   Results and discussion In the neighborhood of Khorramshahr Boulevard, 51.3% of statistical populations are men and 48.7% are women. In the neighborhood of Ziabari, 55.5% are men and 44.5% are women. In terms of age, in Khorramshahr Boulevard, 14.5% of the respondents were 15-24 years old, 21.1% were 25-34, 15.8% were 35-44, 19.7% were 45-54, 5/10% of 55-64 and 18.4% were over 65. In Ziabari, 15.8% of all the respondents were 15-24 years old, 13.7% were 25-34, 15.1% were 35-44, 8.17 % were 45-54, 21.2% were 55-64 years old and 16.4% were over 65. In terms of education, in Khorramshahr Boulevard 14.5% were illiterate, 14.5% had a primary-middle school degree, 35.5% had diploma, 11.8% had advanced diploma, 21.2% had bachelor’s degree and 2.6% had master’s degree. In Ziabari, 2.1% were illiterate, 10.3% had a primary-middle school degree, 37.7% had diploma, 22.6% had advanced diploma, 23.3% had bachelor’s degree and 4.1% had master’s degree. In the neighborhood of Khorramshahr Boulevard, social indicators of environment (2.083) and quality of residential units (3.443) are at a desirable level and indicators of access (-9.949), physical characteristics of the environment (7.706) and public utilities (-5.514) are undesirable. In the neighborhood of Ziabari, the indicators of access (3.298), social characteristics of the environment (11.233), quality of residential units (11.051) and public utilities (3.781) are above the average level of quality and only the indicator of physical characteristics of the environment (1.222) is at the average level of quality. Results also showed that in Khorramshahr Boulevard, physical characteristics of the environment (0.52), social characteristics of the environment (0.308), public utilities (0.184), quality of residential units (0.078) and access (0.067) and in Zaiabri, social characteristics of the environment (0.459), physical characteristics of the environment (0.273), access (0.233), quality of residential units (0.061) and public utilities (0.003) were respectively important according to the residents. Also according to the results, it became apparent that the satisfaction of housing units had moderate positive correlation with satisfaction of residential environment in Khorramshahr Boulevard (0.484) and there was also a relatively strong positive correlation in Ziabari neighborhood (0.599). This means that by increasing the satisfaction of residential units, satisfaction with residential environment increases as well.   Conclusion Given the results, in Ziabari neighborhood, even though the characteristics of the social environment were in good condition according to the residents, but this factor is the most important one from the perspective of residents. This reflects the importance of the social characteristics of environment among residents. For the physical indicator of the environment in this neighborhood, residents’ evaluation of its quality has been consistent with the prioritization of these indicators, so that this indicator has the lowest desirability among the residents. Therefore, it is in second place in terms of importance according to the residents. Other characteristics including access, quality of housing units and public utilities that were evaluated favorably by the residents have the next rank in importance according to them. In the neighborhood of Khorramshahr Boulevard, residents’ evaluation of social characteristics of the environment is relatively similar to Ziabari neighborhood and choosing the physical indicator of environment as the most important factor in the evaluation of residents reflects that this indicator is unsatisfactory. Therefore, given the poor state of physical indicators of the environment, access and public utilities, urban policy should meet the needs of the citizens in these neighborhoods. On the other hand, the results showed a positive and medium intensity relationship in neighborhood of Khorramshahr and relatively strong and positive relationship in neighborhood of Ziabari between housing satisfaction and residential environmental satisfaction. That means, Characteristics of housing units in these two neighborhoods could have a direct and significant role in decreasing or increasing of residential satisfaction.