Compilation of Effective Scenarios on the Sociability of Public Spaces, Case Study: Aerospace Park, District 21, Tehran

Extended abstract

Introduction

Humans, as the most critical factor in the dynamics of urban spaces, need a suitable platform for effective presence in public spaces. Social public spaces, as a place for social interactions for creating desirable urban environments, are one of the goals that has been given much attention in recent decades. The intensification of daily life routines and reduction of social life has made to it necessary to pay attention the preparation of an optimal platform in urban space designs for the presence and participation of a wide range of different social groups in the design of public spaces; on the other hand, public spaces are known as a productive factor for economic growth and development and are very valuable from social and environmental aspects, and their changes require comprehensive and complete evaluation and analysis. These spaces have long been considered the most attractive parts of cities, and as social life arenas, they create places for dependence and social exchange with others. The ability to attract people by public spaces has made these areas the most important part of urban planning. In today's era, one of the harms that threaten public spaces is the issue of privatization, which has distorted the social role of public spaces and has led to social deprivation of space for some groups and strata. Meanwhile, one of the main ways to test the success and popularity of a public arena is to check the number of residents and citizens visiting it at different hours of the day, contrasting with the phenomenon of privatization and exclusivity of public space.



Methodology

With its practical aim and a mixed methodology approach, this study has identified the public sociability indexes in District 21 according to the stated theories, sociability indicators of public spaces in the form of dimensions (PESTEL). Then, the degree of sociability in this field was measured by collecting data in two ways: library collection and questionnaire. Therefore, two groups of questionnaires were designed. The first questionnaire for measuring the sociability of the public arena of District 21 is designed with the format of a Likert scale. The group has approved its transcript of experts, and to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha coefficient is used through SPSS software with the result of 79%. To determine the sample size according to the population of District 21, which according to the latest census is 186,319 persons, 384 case sample size was determined considering a 95% confidence interval and the permissible error rate of 0.05 according to the Cochrane method. The selection of the samples was done in a purposeful and structured way, and people who knew about the area and its surroundings or had visited the complex before were selected for the sample population. In the second part of the expert questionnaire, determination of effective factors, structural analysis (interaction analysis) and uncertainty for data analysis and extraction of possible scenarios were designed by relying on the variables emerging from the literature of sociability of the space, content validity was done with the help of experts, and reliability was done with the calculation of Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Mic Mac and Scenario Wizard software were used to analyze the questionnaire data. The questionnaire has been measured in the form of a matrix of mutual effects, and the weighting of the questionnaire has been measured in the form of a pairwise comparison. The experts approved the degree of correlation of the variables and the uncertainty states. According to Godet, the statistical population of the expert questionnaire should not be less than 25 people. Based on this, 25 urban experts familiar with the literature of future studies and scenario writing were selected.

Results and discussion

After determining the list of effective factors, the variables were entered into the mutual influence analysis matrix for identification and ranking. They were given to the experts by developing a standard mutual influence analysis questionnaire, and the average of the collected answers was prepared to be entered into the Mic Mac software. The output of this stage will be used as the input of the scenario wizard software. The results of Micmac software identify 24 key factors. The output scenarios of the Scenario wizard are 3 scenarios with high compatibility, 23 with low compatibility, and 17 with incompatible scenarios; among these 3 scenarios, one scenario contains favorable and ideal conditions (progressive scenario) for the future of socialization of National Aerospace Park.

Conclusion

The results of this feasibility study indicate that the sociability of the aerospace park is possible by considering the political and economic dimensions, and it is not possible without considering these two aspects. In other words, only considering design requirements and inter-organizational decisions will not support the sociability of this park, and the plan will fail. However, sociability will be possible by paying attention to the political and economic dimensions, including the interaction and political participation of organizational people and citizens, stable government policies, optimal investment security for the private sector, and continuous and annual budget allocation. From the social aspect, according to the possibility of space design by urban experts, effective solutions have been presented to provide sufficient information about the park to citizens of Tehran and, eventually, to the whole country for their presence and participation.