The Evaluation of Social Quality of Open and Semi ـ Open Communication Pathways at University of Kashan's Campus

During past years, in our country many centers have been created in package buildings and lack of open space without regard to the needs of users and learners to open spaces. However, these places do such great importance on the education promotion. Due to the growing trend of students and warm weather conditions in Kashan and its negative impact on the level of interaction, this study aims to check the University of Kashan's social quality, this quality includes some of criteria such as sociability, walkability, flexibility, vitality, legibility, safety and sense of richness. In this study has been used evaluation criteria with an emphasis on social dimension analysis from perspective of experts of architecture, urban planning and urban design, testing of these criteria in studied pathways was through questionnaires, field data and rating them by Likret scales. Finally to determine the extent of importance of each criterion in improving social quality, it has been studied quantifying of them using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The outcome of evaluation shows the dominance of weaknesses over it's strengths. The sociability, walkability, flexibility, vitality, legibility and safety criterions take place in medium range and sense of richness criterion, takes place in poor range. For instance, we can distinguish some major weaknesses of socialization: low quality furniture and inappropriate combinations of land use, in the field of walkability, some issues like inappropriate furniture and flooring, in the flexibility field: incompatibility activities between inside and outside spaces and poor quality spaces in hangouts, in the vitality field: poor quality of green and public spaces and also inefficient transport system, in the legibility field: lack of installed signage, low quality of  the sense of richness and finally in the safety field: issues like safety problem at night and interfering vehicles and pedestrian transmission pathway, were the weaknesses of Kashan university campus. However some traits such as safety at days, campuse lighting and green spaces' quantity are accounted as the strength of campus. Flexible design needs special attention in public spaces design which is ignored in University of Kashans' development plan, So in addition to paying particular attention to subcriteria with a low rating, the emphasis is on extraction criteria for promotion and design points that has the transforming potential into a successful public places, conversion of some riding routes to walking paths, cycle paths and pedestrian design, etc