Towards Determining the Priorities in Areas of Physical Intervention Through Identification of Environmental Qualities in Urban Informal Fabrics

Space quality in an urban area is resulted from the components which through recognizing the effects of each, solutions to improve the overall quality of urban context can be provided widely. This is even more significant in the case of informal urban fabrics where many urban spaces and individual settlements that are facing lack of environmental qualities causes the death of life in the context overtime. It means paying attention to environmental qualities in informal spaces will be one of the most vital factors in identifying areas of physical intervention to improve the quality of life. Since now, little attention has been paid to identifying effective quality indicators and areas of intervention in informal fabrics in Iran. For this reason, the current study tries to take the first steps and move forward by studying the outlines of issues related to environmental qualities and explaining how they affect the indicators of intervention in informal spaces. It will be assumed that the sustainable place model of Canter which is introduced as three main categories of functional, experimental-aesthetic and environmental indicators can be used as an effective model in defining qualitative indicators and areas of physical intervention in informal fabrics. Thus, in order to identify and prioritize areas of intervention in these urban spaces as the aim of this study, each of the index of sustainable model presents a group of sub indicators through Literature, Fuzzy Delphi Method and questionnaire survey that is conducted in peripheral informal settlements of Mashhad Metropolitan in terms of effective environmental quality components. Through weighing the criteria and sub criteria by AHP Technique, areas of physical urban intervention are recognized so that appropriate types of intervention could be suggested according to the kind of problematic urban spaces.