Abstract

This study addresses the relationship between spatial organization of residential complexes and social interaction in these complexes. Environmental organization studies revealed certain sub-branches of this problem including readability, accessibility, permeability, flexibility, visual elements and domain. For the purpose of this study, two residential complexes with different organizations were selected in Shiraz. The survey method was used to analytically test the research hypotheses regarding the effective factors in environmental and interaction organization. The final results were obtained in the form of a case study through a combined approach basically relying on the correlation and regression analysis methods. The index assessment questionnaire was analyzed via the SPSS for investigating the studied residential complexes. The results showed that there was a 0.84 correlation between environmental organization and social interaction. Since the correlation level of significance was below 0.01, there is a strong correlation between these factors. The difference between interactions in these two organizational systems was assessed through the t-test which indicated a significant difference between these social interactions. Regarding the indexes used for environmental organization, the regression analysis showed that the Visual Elements Index with an effectivity coefficient of 0.29 was the strongest and the Readability Index with an effectivity coefficient of 0.21 was the least effective index in predicting this factor. The regression analysis also showed that of the six effective indexes on organization, only three (that is, availability, permeability and domain (territory)) with respective effectivity coefficients of 0.43, 0.28 and 0.26, respectively played a role in creating social interaction in the studied complexes. Due to the suitable fitting of the model, these results can be generalized to the whole society.

Keywords:

Environmental psychology, social interaction, spatial organization, SPSS residential complex,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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