Search results

COVID 19 has had a profound effect on peoples’ activities and the use of public spaces. Before the COVID 19 pandemic urban parks, as healthy places, were of the most favorable places for urban citizens, but nowadays no vitality is found in urban parks due to the absence of people. The perceived risk seems to affect peoples’ decision-making for the visit to urban parks. This study aims to examine the impact of COVID 19 perceived severity and vulnerability on peoples’ visit to the urban parks and further exercise avoidance. It is expected that the result of this study would shed light on the people’s perception of healthy urban parks to exercise during COVID 19.

The participants were recruited from a neighborhood with the greenest and largest parks in Iran that were selected for the study. It was to assure that participants have access to the urban parks within their walkable distance. The mixed-method approach was applied to achieving the research goals. A total of 404 participants attended the survey. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the strategies that reduce peoples’ worries about using urban parks during the COVID 19. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS.

The study hypothesized that peoples’ awareness of COVID 19 affects their perceived risk and disease prevention efficiency. Besides, it was hypothesized that perceived risk and efficacy effects outdoor activities worries exercise avoidance and behavioral avoidance in the urban parks. The result of the study supported the research hypothesis. The more knowledge people acquire of COVID 19 and the lack of efficacy of treatments, the higher they will avoid outdoor activities and exercise. The means of knowledge and perceived risk were higher than previously reported studies.

The result of this study is very important, as it statistically proves that peoples’ priorities and factors that affect their willingness to use public spaces are very much affected by their perception of a healthy environment. It also canonizes the role of facility managers in bringing peoples’ trust in the use of public spaces and more specifically urban parks during pandemic disease distributions.

The study's main objective is to evaluate the morphological developments in the characteristics of the spatial configurations of the residential layouts in Kerman, Iran, in examining the impact on the level of visual privacy through the spectrum of permeability and wayfinding in space syntax analysis.

In this paper, plan graph analysis is used to measure the syntactic properties of seven topological residential architecture plans in Kerman, Iran, built from the 1970s to 2010s. The methodology involves the development of mathematical measurements to signify permeability and simulation of visibility graph analysis (VGA) to indicate wayfinding.

The findings reveal the residential layouts of Iranian houses tend to be less integrated over decades of design development from the 1970s to 2010s. Reduction in spatial integration corresponds to increase segregation allowing for enhanced visual privacy. The study underpins that, even with the constraints in the scale of the house and reduction in the number of nodes, as evident in the design of the modern residential layout, the efficient level of visual privacy is still achievable with regards to the standards demanded by the local culture.

The study examines the development in residential spatial configuration and building scale on visual privacy through a proposed methodology based on the level of permeability and wayfinding measured as a combined effect using the space syntax analysis and visual accessibility.

Developing graduate students' academic writing has been a major concern for many scholars over the past few years. Existing literature on the challenges of thesis writing has not focused on master's students in English language teaching (ELT). Data on the challenges have been mainly gathered from the theses and focused on the structure and genre requirements. Few available studies have investigated such challenges through the lens of supervisors in an international context. Knowledge about the factors hindering the thesis writing process of non-native MA students in English from the supervisors' perspectives is scarce. This study attempts to fill these gaps by answering this question: From supervisors' perspectives, what factors hinder the thesis writing process of non-native MA students?

Thirty supervisors from state and private universities across Iran voluntarily participated in this qualitative study. Drawing upon teachers' diaries and semi-structured interviews, the authors identified major factors negatively influencing the thesis work of master's students. Data were transferred into NVivo 10 and analyzed thematically following Colaizzi's method.

The study found that factors constraining students' writing were (1) students' lack of effort, (2) students' lack of a strategy for writing, (3) students' lack of autonomy and (4) students' absence of voice.

The authors discuss the practical implications of these factors for different stakeholders. There is a growing interest in postgraduate students' thesis writing processes. Surprisingly, no research exists on supervisors' perceptions of factors that constrain the thesis writing process of non-native English master's students.