خلاصة:
In urban planning, access to public spaces provides social relations for citizens. The goal of this
paper is to evaluate the elderly's requirements in public spaces (case study of Sheet Bazaar, Zanjan, Iran) in order to
recognize and classify their strengths and weaknesses and present more appropriate and effective strategies for their
improvement. In this research, the related literature on old age and requirements of the elderly in public open spaces
was reviewed and the factors affecting their use of physical places were determined at the first stage of the study. After
reviewing the literature, some observations on the elderly were made and questionnaires were given to 80 users with
the age of over 65 years old to serve the purpose of this study. The results of the questionnaires indicate that the frequent
problems of the elderly in public open spaces were identified as follows: pollution (24.8%), pavements and roads
(24.6%), traffic (14.4%), safety (12.2%), insufficiency of maintenance and management (9.6%), and socio-cultural
problems (5.3%). In addition, the result of the observations in the main research area shows that the design properties
had the highest and maintenance-management services had the lowest success percentages. In the end, some solutions
were presented for designing new public open spaces and developing the existing spaces.
ملخص الجهاز:
International Journal Of Architecture and Urban Development Vol. 7, No1, Winter 2017 Evaluation of Quality of Public Open Spaces for the Elderly Case Study: (sheet-e- Bazaar in Zanjan) *1Hooman Sobouti, 2 Pari Alavi 1.
In this research, the related literature on old age and requirements of the elderly in public open spaces was reviewed and the factors affecting their use of physical places were determined at the first stage of the study.
This interdisciplinary perspective suggests that urban public spaces reflect the cultural order, not through a one-to-one correspondence between spatial arrangements and meaning, but through a complex "culture- making" process, in which cultural representations are produced, manipulated, and understood by designers, politicians, users, and commentators within the changing historical, economic, and sociopolitical contexts (Low, 1997).
The factors that make a city or a public space suitable to the needs of the elderly are numerous: adequate offer of housing, goods, and services of daily use in the neighborhood, access to treatments, suitable places for outdoor and indoor meeting, ability to move independently, and in particular solid social network (Kreuzer, 2006; Steffen et al.
It is also aimed to find the problems of the elderly based on design and management actions in public open spaces and put forward solutions in order to facilitate the social life of this age group.
Specifically, maintaining the social relations of the elderly and their communication with others can only be possible by the urban common living environments like public open spaces (parks, plazas, pedestrian zones, etc.