A Comparison between Environmental Designers and the Public’s Attitude towards Urban Identity and its Enhancement (A Case Study: Shemiran Area, North of Tehran)

Urban planners and designers as well as architects are the main designers and decision makers of the urban environment today, whilst the public are the main users of those spaces without having any share in this regard. Having knowledge about the appropriateness of the urban spaces from the people’s point of view and knowing the preferences of the users can be helpful in designing a better environment. A large number of studies carried out in the field of environmental psychology indicate a considerable difference between the attitudes of environmental designers and that of other groups of people regarding the evaluation of specific characteristics of the specified environment. Since most of these pieces of research have been carried out in other countries, it is not reasonable to generalize their results to our country, thus the investigation in Iranian context is necessary. This study is a comparison between environmental designers and the public’s views on urban identity and the main environmental elements which enhance such identity. The study is concentrating on Shemiran area located in the north of Tehran. The people’s viewpoints were gathered through a questionnaire and those of experts were asked through face to face interviews on the basis of a series of structured questions. The results indicate that, in contrast to the findings of similar studies conducted in the western countries, there is consensus and similarities between different groups of the people and experts’ respondents on their evaluation of the environment.