The Role of Environmental Perception in Understanding and Designing Cultural Landscape in the Cities’ Entrance Spaces; Case Study: Western Entrance of Gorgan

Nowadays, majority of the cities’ entrances have become uniform and cliché spaces in lieu of manifesting the identity properties and showcasing the cultural ID. The degree of uniformity is so extreme that they are not even understandable. Therefore, it is necessary to seek creating of the required preparations for understanding of such an identity alongside with creation and enhancement of the identity in the cities’ entrances. In other words, manifestation of identity in a tangible and perceivable manner for the onlookers is of great importance in the entire urban spaces, especially cities’ entrances as the first space of the individuals’ familiarization with the city. The objective in offering the present study is investigation of the role of perception and the factors influencing it on the ever increasing conception of the landscape drawn on a special identity in a neighborhood and this has been specifically conducted on the western entrance in Gorgan. To do so, this qualitative research deals within the format of an applied research based on a descriptive-analytical method with the exploration of the aforesaid subject and offers in the course of its examinations a matrix table for exploring the relationship between the indicators influencing the environmental comprehension of the cities’ entrances with various species of the cultural landscape. The main method of data collection has been documentary research, library search and field survey. The results obtained from the present study indicate that paying attention to various factors like age and gender groups, the observers’ mobility or staticity, being pedestrians or passengers, being citizens or travelers and others in the designing of the spaces influences the increase in the individuals’ perception of the well-identified spaces featuring cultural landscapes. On the other hand, the application of various human and manmade factors and natural elements is effective on the creation of a perceivable cultural landscape. In organizing the entrance in Gorgan, as a northern city with unique climate and special natural environment, paying special attention to the natural factors, as the most distinct factors of creating cultural landscape, is of great importance. Engaging the various age, gender groups, etc. as well as the proportional designing based on their perceptional properties in such activities like creation of rosaries, urban farming and agrotourism and so forth can enable the achievement of a perceivable cultural landscape.