Different conceptions of crime in design practice, sociology, environmental psychology, and criminology indicate an extensive articulation of crime in relation to the built environment and urban form in the city. Five decades of different studies on urban crime, crime prevention through environmental design, and fear of crime indicate an implicit and gradual movement from deterministic to possibilistic propositions in exploring the relationships between urban crime and environmental design both in theory and practice. Hence, the study firstly conducts a critical review on the issue of urban crime in relation to urban design, planning, and architecture disciplines. Categorizing different researches of urban crime in terms of their propositions and various dimensions of crime prevention through environmental design, the study proceeds to discuss the issue of crime in relation to spatiality and sociality in the city. Moreover, grounding the issue of safety in the context of place theory and avoiding deterministic and free-will approaches to urban crime, the study advocates for the necessity of mapping urban morphology, functional attributes, and spatial patterns in relation to socio-economic condition and demographic profiling. Thus, giving primacy to spatiality in relation to sociality and criticizing the absence of morphological mapping of urban crime, the study denotes the multi-scalar and multi-dimensional attributes of urban crime in relation to morphological, functional, perceptual, and social dimensions of a safe place by design.

In the recent past, access graphs have been applied as a space syntax technique to analyze the spatial configuration of buildings in correlation with the social concepts. The aim of this study is to show the deficiencies in the use of the space syntax method in the examining of spatial relation in traditional houses in Iran. Traditional Iranian houses consider climate and privacy as very important factors for generating a sound social relationship between individual house and its occupants. It examined these factors in the cities of Masouleh, Gilan, Yazd and Shiraz using access graphs. In order to understand the two factors namely; cultural and climatic factors affecting the spatial relations in Iranian traditional houses during the varied seasons, the findings in this study are shown in three graphs rather than just the one as in a usual space syntax approach. This study also shows the necessity for the application of two graphs to represent the winter and summer use of interior spaces, and the use of an overall triple graph to demonstrate the entire house based on the use of Iranian home culture with respect to distinguishing the various functions of the rooms.

Historic buildings are an integral part of the built environment that have historical, cultural, social, and economic value. Sustainable conservation/rehabilitation/renovation of historic buildings that will perform well for decades is therefore critical. Numerous sustainability-rating systems (e.g., LEED, BREEAM, DGNB, etc.) have been developed to deal with broader sustainability objectives in the design of new buildings, which are not adequate/sufficient in intervention in historic buildings. This paper aims to study and explore rating systems for historic buildings. It is hypothesized that using rating systems can help historic buildings achieve more sustainable outcomes. The paper begins by presenting comprehensive background information on existing sustainability-rating systems worldwide, followed by a systematic review of the literature on rating systems for historic buildings. The PRISMA flowchart (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was used, searching Science Direct and Google Scholar databases. The study reveals most current studies focus on environmental aspects, such as improving the energy efficiency of historic buildings, which results in lowering economic costs and increasing occupant satisfaction with the indoor environment. We argue that all three traditional dimensions of sustainability should be balanced when developing or adapting the next generation of rating systems to assess/address the sustainability of historic buildings.

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It is often believed and expected that a clear relationship exists between human personality and human preferences in architecture. However, by reviewing the findings of previous studies, it is found out that such expectation is not necessarily true, as there is no consistency among previous findings. This study provides a critical review and overall classification of various research approaches and assessment methods used in previous studies. In addition, the theoretical and practical shortcomings of each approach have been introduced. Next, the psychological approach is recommended as a more feasible one, and the studies carried out using this approach are structurally analyzed. The theoretical frameworks, strategies and the execution tactics of these researches were critically reviewed. Finally, a systematic quadruple model was suggested for evaluating aesthetic experiences and judgments. After presenting the manifest and the hidden variables with this model, machine learning helped to discover the hidden patterns in the personality and human preferences.