نوع مقاله : پژوهشی-مطالعه موردی
نویسندگان
1 دانشکده معماری و شهرسازی، دانشگاه علم و صنعت ایران، تهران، ایران
2 گروه آمار و اپیدمیولوژی، مرکز تحقیقات پیشگیری از آسیبهای ترافیکی، دانشگاه علوم پزشکی تبریز، تبریز، ایران
3 مرکز تحقیقات روانپزشکی و علوم رفتاری، دانشگاه علوم پزشکی تبریز، تبریز، ایران
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Many experts of environmental sciences have conducted research to find the environmental factors that impact upon Covid-19. A glance at the related literature shows that these researches have been limited to such larger scales as inter-country or inter-city scales. So, the neighborhood, as the major environment that people live in, has not yet been addressed. Moreover, people’s understanding of high-risk environmental factors as the major incentive of the initiatives for reducing the spread of the virus has been ignored. I seem necessary to focus on this issue. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to find the perceptual factors of the environment that impact upon creating a sense of risk of being infected with Covid-19 at neighborhood level, and less dealt with in the literature. Two questions were posed and answered: 1) what are the environmental factors affecting the perception of the risk of being infected with Covid-19 at the neighborhood level? 2) what factors have received less attention in the past studies?
Method
This applied research was done in three stages. First, a systematic review was done on the literature on Covid-19 and the built environment, and the environmental variables were identified. The second stage (a descriptive exploration) focused on the perceptual factors that influence on the sense of risk of being infected among the citizens of Tabriz. Content analysis and Shannon's entropy were used for data analysis. The third stage dealt with the comparison of the factors identified in the previous stages.
Results
The results revealed some features of the built environment, as well as some of the socio-cultural factors and social abnormalities that had increasingly caused people’s concerns but are missing in the related literature. To name only some, amongst the socio-cultural variables are “not observing some of the public behaviors like holding ceremonies” and “not considering personal and collective hygiene” as the issues that boos tension. Hawking was the most frequent example of social abnormalities. Regarding the built environment variables, one can name some issues that has made the places crowded, including “traffic routes”, “compact parking lots”, “high referred places and tools” (e.g., ATMs, bakeries, etc.), “being neighbor to crowded uses”, and “places that host informal gatherings”. To the participants, these issues make the infection more probable. Moreover, benches and trash cans are known as high-risk tools of the environment.
Discussion and Conclusion
This study intended to deal with the gaps of the researches focusing on environmental variables that influence Covid-19 pandemic. Regarding the socio-cultural factors discussed in this study we can say Covid-19 pandemic was a health crisis enhancing people’s sensitivity to health issues, it seems a must to include public health and safety. Moreover, it seems necessary to consider people’s rights more than before and encourage them to enhance the sense of altruism.
Moreover, hawkers influence environment uses and make the commuting routes more crowed. Establishing small markets and predicting some places for observing health standards can reduce their negative effects over the pandemic period.
Moreover, the participants mentioned such places crowed as bakeries, supermarkets, shopping centers, stores, fruit and vegetable markets, pharmacies, banks and ATMs. They are all located in place of residence, but missed by the studies focusing on Covid-19. It is evident that most of the residents of neighbors use these spaces and tools, so the uses are crowded. The main cause of the residents’ objections to these spaces, in terms of architecture, is that they are small lack spatial separation. In terms of urban scale, the number of such places is small, they are so close to other crowded uses, and they are not used properly.
Since cars are not parked correctly at the neighborhoods, they make the sidewalks narrow and even impassable in some cases. This in turn leads to crowded spaces and reducing the possibility of social distancing. Regarding the paths, some issues have been mentioned as the reasons of changes in the movement of people in the neighborhoods, including the quality of the floor of the paths, so steep paths, and unpredictable and unsafe spots on the footpaths.
Moreover, among the things that are used frequently are trash cans and benches. Not cleaning and disinfecting them and lack of proper lids for the trash cans had increased people’s concern on the possibility of infection with the virus.
A remarkable contribution of this study was introducing new environmental factors as “the contiguity of crowded uses”. Regarding the factor, one can say that placing some uses close to each has increased the crowd and the feeling of being in danger of infection. Moreover, some places of the city are unofficial hangouts and gatherings of various groups of people. Among the places are gathering places for women, young people, and workers. The issue clearly shows lack of enough suitable spaces for some daily activities the neighborhoods. One can add to the list some issues as noise pollution as a secondary factor that influences people's mental health and enhances their feeling of danger in the period. Taking some suitable environmental solutions, it seems to be possible to control effectively and remarkably the tensions within people’s living spaces. Moreover, regarding the mentioned issues, it seems necessary to explore in more detail the infection rate in the literature.
کلیدواژهها English
©2024 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
