Abstract

Social capital as prominent branch of sociology and social science is recently considered -though as a conceptual tool- in the field of urban design to improve urban qualities. In this study, considering that promotion of social functions in urban texture is a strategy to increase quality of citizenship life, it is tried to find some logical relationships between the level of the social capital and walkability and sociability as the qualities of urban design within social context, in order to be able to enhance social capital substrates and provide an urbanism approach to develop an operational tool the concept of social capital in urban design. This article tries to study the effects of urban qualities including walkability and sociability on the level of social capital in a community. In this respect, after offering some common definition for the concept of social science from the viewpoints of some experts in this field, and dealing briefly with the notions of walkability and sociability, the evaluation of each quality as well as its sub-qualities based on AHP technique are presented. The results from the statistical and quantified analysis of the data from questionnaires showed that there is a direct relationship between changes in the qualities and the social capital indicators; however, this relationship is not a linear one.

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