A Process-Oriented Model of Resident-Housing Congruence during Family Life Cycle

Elham Fallah (Student of University of Tehran)

Person-environment congruence is a significant factor when evaluating a desirable living environment. When optimal congruence is established between environmental features and individuals’ behaviors, they find their environment satisfactory and effective. The current research presents a theoretical framework for resident- housing congruence from a new perspective, in which congruence is defined in a cyclical process between residents’ needs and environmental affordances. In the process of resident- housing congruence, resident is construed as a member of the family. S/he takes on different roles in a family lifecycle and has different needs in every stage of his/her life. The proposed theoretical framework establishes a logical relationship among the theories in the fields of architecture, environmental psychology, developmental psychology and occupational psychology. The present study aims at investigating the how congruence is established between residents and their housing in tree dominant housing patterns of Yazd, a traditional city in Iran.

This study, adopting an ethnographic approach, is informed by the premises of qualitative research. The results of research reveal that residents always compare their real housing with their ideal mental images of housing and the extent to which the real housing space is similar to their ideal mental image determines the strategy for establishing congruency between residents and houses. When the real housing space is similar to residents' ideal open space, they establish a two-way relationship with the space and change the space according to their needs. However, the more the space is different from residents' ideal of space, the more their relationship becomes one-way and residents are obliged to change their needs and behavior according to the affordances of the environment or move from their houses to another house that is more ideal.

Figure 1: the effect of the extent of similarity between residents' mental ideals of housing space and the his real housing space on the congruence strategies between residents and houses' open space.

Yazd is one of the prominent examples of cities whose social, cultural, and physical structure, despite substantial changes at the end of the forties decade to the present, can represent and illuminate the spatial composition of Iranian traditional cities during the Islamic period. This city experienced the development of industrial revolution after 1920. These developments were not properly managed by the government, and even the compulsory modernization of cities by the Pahlavi government led to a rapid change in the patterns of housing, while the lifestyle of residents was still traditional, therefore the balance of relationship between residents and their housing has destroyed And they began to make congruence between their own needs and housing affordances This problem exists in many historic cities of developing countries, because these countries did not experience modernization themselves, but imported it, and this imported modernization suddenly changed their urban texture and housing patterns regardless of residents’ culture and lifestyle. Addressing this problem and its solutions at a global conference can lead to better management of future developments in these cities.

Keywords: resident, housing, congruence, family lifecycle, Yazd, cyclical model