Examination of effects of urban street configuration on the amount of commercial buildings establishment (according to natural movement theory), Case study: Hamedan

Abstract

The pattern of the urban layer is one of the factors that influence land use within the cities. Since the focus of this research is movement, accessibility, street network and urban form, the theory of Natural Movement is applied. This theory believes that movement is fundamentally a morphological issue in urbanism. It is a functional product of the intrinsic nature of the grid, and not a specialized aspect of it. In fact, spatial configuration is potentially a predictor of both pedestrians and vehicular traffic flows in urban environments. According to the theory of Natural Movement, the setting of uses and pedestrian’s movement are influenced by space configuration. Also, there exists a remarkable correlation between the density of setting uses which attract the populations and syntactic spatial variables. This research aims at verifying these relations in two trade regions adjacent to city center in Hamedan. The reason to choose Hamedan city is using unique situation of this city, for example symmetry in designing axes and accessibility spaces. To analyze the setting of trade uses adjacent to main axes and correlation ratio of these settings with spatial syntactic features of axes, we use correlation analysis. The rate of space legibility was also studied. It was known that where correlation variables, connectivity, control and local integration, regarded as spatial syntactic variables in Natural Movement Theory (Hillier),have greater values and their correlation with density of setting trade uses adjacent to main axis is greater, the commercial units are set more densely around this axis. This relationship was also verified by space intellilgibility. The main hypothesis of the research indicating the direct relationship between settings uses spatial syntactic variables. The application of Natural Movement Theory was investigated in this study.