Concept of Territory in Residential Complexes: A Comparative Study of two High-rise and Low-rise Complexes in Tehran

Nowadays we are living in a situation that houses are looked as a profitable product and as an economic need for families, instead of being a place for tranquillity. In the other word, Home which is generally a place of residence is now replaced by shelter. In the other hand, people need to have tranquillity, sense of security in private life and respected territory; so organization of living environment is not possible without adopting accurate approach to define private and public areas and hierarchy of living environments. Making this kind of environment increases sense of place attachment, prepares better condition for social relationship and gives a unique identity. Due to the relationship between people and environment which depends on several factors, this article considers the concept of territory as one of the effective subjects in quality of life in residential complexes. Territory is not purely spatial; it is also very much a social phenomenon. In fact, Territoriality is about the location of societies in space. In this way, it helps people to structure and organize their societies. It also plays a key role in our behaviour, allowing us to organise the space around us and feel a sense of personal and social identity. In this regard, Territory is a complicated concept and remarkable device going well beyond the provision of simple space. According to the sense of privacy and level of control on the surrounding environment, there are several categorization of concept of territory. In this article, three different categories of Primary (private territory), Secondary (semi private and semi public) and Public territory, has been selected for analysis. Furthermore the study on the various aspects of this concept reveals that, six different factors influence the concept of territory, can be categorized as social, geographical-cultural, perceptual, functional, physical and time. In the other step, the concept of territory and regarding influential factors in conventional residential complexes which is expanded in height and surface, has been analysed. In this regards two cases, including a part of Ekbatan and ShahrakeGharb developments, has been selected for survey of residential patterns in Tehran.This research is a qualitative research by using questionnaire and an analysis of cognitive maps drown by residents. The result of survey can be classified in three Scales. In the large scale, the result shows that mental territories of residents are not compatible with planners. In the medium scale, the results indicate that in the case of providing public services and green space for social interaction, expandingin height and surface, is not influential on residents’ satisfaction. Although building height and uniformity of building, strengthen the public territory and social identity, but they reduce the ability of secondary territory. Finally in the small scale, considering the security of public and secondary territory and liveability of the territories can affect on satisfaction of residents. In addition, in satisfaction of quality of different territories in residential areas, from residents perspective, the role of perceptual, social and geographical-cultural factors are more important than factors such as physical or functional.