Ph.D

Mr Asadpour Ali will present his P.H.D thesis on " The Model of River Representation as  an imageable Urban Landscape " at 15:00 P.M on 8 July 2014 under the guidance of Dr.Feizi Mohsen, Dr.Mozaffar Farhang.

Abstract: Eligible, manipulated and even empty mental images and cognitive maps in urban landscapes make the formation of landscape which could be defined as any parts of environment that limited to the knowledge and conscious of a place, a problematic issue. The imageability as concept and indicator consists of natural, historical and scenic dimensions. In this thesis, mental images and cognitive maps of citizens from Shiraz Khoshk River extracted by social survey based on questionnaires in which 935 citizens involved. Two kinds of methods have been applied named “sketches maps” and “landscape image sketching technique”. Data have been analysed by “content analysis” and “factor analysis” and the results of each part and methods had been compared and at the end accumulated with each other. The findings of the thesis reveal that factors named 1) Spatial configuration, 2) Trees scape, 3) Vegetations scape, 4) Human scape, 5) Cityscape, 6) Traffic scape and 7) Waterscape are the main and most important factors in urban rivers imageability. On the other hand, findings of “general model of river landscape representation” state that “Spatial configuration” is the most important factor in urban river imageability which represented by “partial”, “limited” and “birds’ eye” views and panorama views do not have considerable effects. Other new finding of this research is the roll of “Human scape” in imageability that had not been mentioned in previous researches. This factor belongs to presence of humans in maps and sketches schematically. “Cityscape” as another new impressive factor in urban river imageability consists of collected city buildings that had been drawn with little details and could be called some kinds of the city silhouette. Besides, formation of “traffic scape” which is the results of artificial interventions in urban rivers scape especially in metropolitan areas should be managed as an ecological and aesthetic issue. On the other hand, analysing the quality of sketches and level of details put into drawing by citizens in general shows that visual attributes of natural elements such as trees and vegetations have less importance than their natural essence. Most of the participations’ attempts and emphasises have been on the organization of the natural elements in which “liner organization pattern” used in majority. This subject is as important that the findings showed a positive and considerable correlation between natural elements details and liner organization pattern. In this kind of view, the pattern of vegetation organization could be called as the most important issue in mental maps and images. The results of this thesis indicate the undeniable roll of “waterscape” in increasing river scape imageability. The results also recommended the method combined two defined mental image representations called “General representation mental- cognitial images” in urban landscape. Key words: model, imageability, urban landscape, cognitive maps, mental images, Khoshk River