ارزیابی معیارهای کالبدی پایداری در محله های شهری (با تکیه بر اقلیم گرم و خشک ایران)

Population increase in cities, as well as a strong trend towards urbanization that have a variety of reasons, including focusing more services in cities is a phenomenon which large cities in developing countries are faced. After the energy crisis in the 70s, a new era, was established in urban development which is known as "sustainable era". In this era, full attention was paid to the environmental efficiency, and then the built environments so that they can make best use of resources available on the nature and minimize the amount of pollution generated. Until three decades ago, there was a sense of optimism that the technology will solve all problems on earth; however the technology relating to non-renewable resources has been followed by climate change through the development of a phenomenon such as global warming. Pollution, increased environmental pollutants, loss of biodiversity and the increasing growth of population have left their adverse effects on the earth. Due to the increase in global warming and climate change, thinkers and theorists have sought many different solutions, one of which is the theory of "sustainable development". For years, the theory had further emphasized the economic needs and environmental limitations, but it has played an important role in the local and indigenous aspects with the emergence of the slogan "think globally, act locally" in the past decade. On the other hand, each city can be identified by the characteristics of its residential communities, and can meet various economic, social, cultural needs of its citizens if the problems and damages are less at the community level. Community plays important role in social life balance in cities as a main element of urban space. If life quality changes in communities, it will be rapidly effect on the entire city. In early century 20, paying attention to residential communities was regarded as the main topic of new urban development theories such that these theories have been welcomed in order to deal with different urban problems (such as problems of management, social relations, hygienic issues, welfare issues and semantic and identity dimensions). Although many definitions have been presented on the concept of sustainable development at the macro level, its concept is not yet clear with certainty at the local scale, while the urban communities are significantly important, and their strengths or weaknesses can spread to the entire city for different aspects so that its performance can be affected. Following the extensive discussions on sustainable development, a particular attention was also given to the sustainable urban communities. Following the extensive discussions on sustainable development, a particular attention was also given to the sustainable urban communities. Since urban communities consume a great amount of energy, it is necessary that more attentions are paid to how to sustain these areas. What can currently be seen, are developments in the old urban contexts and their replacement by new contexts in which a large number of problems may be encountered, and then there would be more problems when a comparison is made between the new contexts and older communities. Many communities could act self-sufficiently in the past and fulfill their needs and this doesn’t hold true for the current communities. Discovering characteristics of these older communities will pave the way for paying attention to them and making these spaces more efficient than ever from different perspectives. This paper has explored criteria for structure of sustainable urban communities and tried to prove the hypothesis that physical characteristics of a community in the hot and dry climate of Iran meets some principles leading to sustain traditional indigenous communities. In this research, different references have been studied in order to formulate structural criteria of urban sustainable communities and interpretive approach has been used. Firstly, by reviewing the available references, some questions were raised in the research. Considering the questions, the research hypothesis is mentioned as follows: Physical characteristic of community in hot and arid climate of Iran has the principles leading to sustainability of native –traditional communities. By mentioning the hypothesis, the preset research will seek to prove it. To prove the hypothesis, three traditional indigenous communities in Yazd were studied. The physical criteria for sustainable community in both housing and community sectors were studied by distributing questionnaires using importance-satisfaction rate. Finally, the scientific-deductive method confirmed that traditional communities of Iran which were located in hot and arid climate enjoy sustainable physical criteria. Also their physical problems are fewer than the problems in which many contemporary buildings and communities are involved in. By proving the hypothesis, it is found that traditional communities have some physical principles which have directed them to higher sustainability.