ناصر برک پور

Over the past three decades, local governments have played an important role in climate change policies. During this period, many cities around the world have developed their own climate plans and measures within the multilevel governance framework. On the other hand, land use planning is one of the most effective tools to facilitate local adaptation to climate change. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to evaluate land use plans in line with climate change adaptation policies in Qazvin urban region.

In this study, the documentary research method and the technique of systematic review of documents and plans prepared for urban and peri-urban development in Qazvin urban complex at different levels during the last two decades has been used. In addition, in order to adapt the climate adaptation policies and the formulated policies in these documents, the comparative-analytical method has been used. The measurement scale in the method was the Likert scale. The validity of the answers has been obtained based on the audit method and the use of expert opinions.

The assessments showe a relatively high level of conformity between climate change adaptation policies and developed policies and programs. This indicates the relative success of existing plans and policies at the national and regional levels in the face of climate change, but the lack of coordination, causes implementation problems and in some ways leads to increased climate change and its effects and consequences in the region. The policies of Qazvin province spatial planning document have the most compliance. Among the climate adaptation policies in the field of land use, the policy of "determining the activity of polluting uses and their appropriate location according to environmental assessments" has the most compliance and the policy of "planning for the establishment of uses based on ecological capacity" has the least compliance with the policies of this document.

Considering the mentioned features of multi-level governance and considering the existence of weaknesses in the body of the land use planning system both in the field of policy and in the field of performance in the Qazvin Urban Region in general, and weakness in facing climate changes in the city of Qazvin in particular, using new management approaches in this region, such as multi-level climate governance, can be a way forward. The establishment of such a system requires knowing the effective actors and stakeholders and examining the capacities and governance methods that can be used in this region. Therefore, the emphasis on greater interinstitutional coordination and the prevention of conflicts of interest, both horizontally and vertically, and the use of all institutional and legal capacities in the field of adaptation to climate change should be on the agenda of the local government.

In recent years, developing free zones has become as one of the development tools in regional planning. the objectives of the establishment of free zones" carrying out infrastructure, civil and economic development "," economic growth and development "," investment and increase public revenue "," creation of healthy employment and It has been the productive "active presence in global and regional markets", the "production and export of industrial and convertible goods" and the "provision of public services" that they have not achieved some objectives. In this regard, it seems that analyzing each zone in order to solve the current problems, is necessary. So the objective of this research is analyzing the objectives realization of building free zones and also their impacts on urban growth intensity in three Iranian zones: Arvand, Qeshm and Maku. The method of this research is descriptive – analytical based on documental studies. Quantitative methods in SPSS software specially measuring correlation are used in analysis. The results show that succeed in achieving the goals of building these zones is relative but there is a positive correlation between increasing urban growth and increasing investment, decreasing imports, appropriate distribution of jobs and increasing financial resources. The negative correlation of export growth factors with urban growth is also due to increased export of goods (industrial or agricultural, ...) and not services in these areas, the establishment and growth of activities outside urban areas Overall, urban development in free zones has led to improved quality of life and employment in their cities

Zayandehrood River is the largest river of central Iran, which passes through the city of Isfahan. This river has constantly contributed to the growth of Isfahan and, throughout the history, has provided the city with a green landscape, despite the hot and arid climate of the region. Moreover, Madies are neighborhood aqua-ducts from Zayandehrood, initially developed for agricultural purposes and, as the city developed, turned into greenways for urban fabric. These aqua-ducts have been one of the major infrastructural elements of neighborhoods with key ecological and social roles. Recently, Zayandehrood’s drying up has become one of the most important incidents with devastating impacts on Isfahan and its local communities. Madies’ drying up has had negative impacts on the neighborhoods’ sense of place as well as local communities’ lives. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate the resilience of two local communities in the vicinity of Madies in Isfahan, namely Abbas Abad and Barazandeh districts.

 This research incorporated survey and secondary data analysis to evaluate the resilience of these communities. The research was conducted based on a pre-developed community resilience framework. Overall, 22 authorities and experts from the Municipality of Isfahan and 379 residents from the two local communities were surveyed. Afterwards, the resulting data was analyzed quantitatively through SPSS software.

The findings show that the overall community resilience level is below the moderate level. The lowest score, belonging to local institutional/governance factors, is 1.7 and the highest score is 3.25, a few points higher than the moderate level. The latter score belongs to spatio-physical factors in Abbas Abad district.

 Community resilience is not limited to the ability of communities in withstanding  adverse situations. Although the local communities of Isfahan are apparently accustomed to the status quo, the overall score of community resilience of these communities is below the moderate level. Therefore, there should be strategies to enhance the resilience of local communities in the city.

“A city is not a Hotel”, a metaphor which has been used by John Friedmann (1999) to describe transformations of local governance, is relatively new and unknown, but in relation with urban society and management of Iran today is timely and meaningful. Based on this metaphor, it is assumed that the city would be like a hotel. As a hotel, well- paying guests occupy the top floors of the tower, whilst numbers of homeless people jostle in the alleys. According to Friedmann, there are three fatal flaws in this metaphor. No one can be said to “own” the city in the sense that stockholders own a capitalist enterprise. Cities are not supposed to be “profitable” and many of the city’s inhabitants harbor strong attachments to the small corner of the earth. But if the city is not a capitalist enterprise, and there is no distinguished Board of Directors, then what is it? ...The city is not a “hotel”, because it is, potentially at least, a political community, a collective entity whose management is ultimately accountable to its long- term residents, its “citizens”. It is citizens who constitute its “putative” Board of Directors”, with the implicit power to “hire and fire” the city’s management.

In the current era, inequality, deprivation, and exclusion have become one of the most important issues among emerging urban problems and challenges, and the gap between rich and poor in most countries has reached its highest level in the last thirty years. On the other hand, development plans as one of the most important tools for urban management and planning can be prepared using the most comprehensive and efficient approaches such as social sustainability to address these problems and challenges. In recent years, Zanjan city has witnessed an increase in various inequalities and deprivation. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate the tendency of Zanjan urban and regional development plans to urban social sustainability. In this research, the Plans Quality Evaluation method and Content Analysis technique have been utilized to evaluate Zanjan urban and regional development plans with regards to 14 dimensions and 47 variables of social sustainability. The results showed that in the past decades these plans have not been able to adequately reflect the strategies and policies of social sustainability in their content. Also, in the evaluation of these plans, it was determined that the issue of social sustainability is reflected more in urban plans rather than regional plans. In the review of the dimensions of social sustainability and their prioritization, it was found that the fundamental dimensions and novel issues of social sustainability, including vitality, social cohesion, social capital, governance and participation, and equality were reflected less than other items in various plans.

In spite of the fact that Kolys live for many years in Iran, they have always been excluded by the majorities and have been recognized by a special identity in the imagination of them, so that in different cities, including the city of Sari, they have experienced displacement and leaving their place of residence. Therefore, this research has been done by using ethnographic method and qualitative content analysis with the aim of understanding the contexts, conditions, and experiences of Kolys living in the Nobonyad town about exclusion,. The results of this study show that exclusion of Kolys living in the Nobonyad town is due to two main factors which are different culture and continuous social, economic, political, and legal deprivation. Although each of these factors exacerbates the other, the simultaneous effects of these two factors do not apply to all Kolys. These factors lead to generating fear through othering and generalizing negative imaginations. Overcoming this fear, enables a different set of processes such as rejecting the other, strengthening social capital within the group, reducing exposure and effective out-group relationships, and spatial segregation to take place, which lead to the exclusion of Kolys in various dimensions and domains of everyday life.

Our country’s cities and municipalities face numerous social, economic, and environmental problems. According to many experts, the root of an essential part of these problems lies in the inefficiency of the urban planning and management system. The results of various research in recent decades on the institutional, financial, and functional dimensions of urban management in Iran indicate the overlap and interference of responsibilities of state and public organizations, lack of coordination in the provision of municipal services, limited scope and power of local institutions, financial instability, territorial fragmentation, and other problems. Naturally, in response to various institutional, policy, and functional fragmentations, the appropriate solution to increase the integration and coherence in decision-making and action, in the form of “integrated urban management,” has been sought.

In general, two rational and comprehensive strategies can be adopted to deal with functional fragmentation within cities: a) Merger and integration of all active organizations in cities and the establishment of a large and unified organization that has all responsibilities for planning and management; B) Designation of a significant organization (among organizations active in urban planning and management) to coordinate all plans, programs, and activities of organizations involved in urban planning and management based on a plan which is accepted by all of them. The first strategy, which is radical, requires very large organizational consolidations that are not politically feasible and will face many organizational resistances and legal obstacles. In contrast, the second strategy has a higher capacity for implementation because the existing organizational power structure is largely maintained. Only activities centered on a single agreed plan will be monitored by a significant (lead) organization. Suppose this significant and coordinating organization is called the lead organization due to its role in inter-organizational interactions. In that case, the critical question in implementing this strategy is which organization can or must play the leading role of organizations active in the city to achieve integrated urban management. Based on the arguments presented in this article, compared to all existing organizations, the city council, and the municipality have the most appropriateness for the leadership role of organizations active in urban planning and management. For the current research, we reviewed the existing studies and legal documents and conducted in-depth interviews with city and government managers and executives. These sources were used to obtain data and test the analytical model. Our analytical model is based on an ideal type model.

This article, which studied the dimension of functional integration in detail, shows that some fundamental principles in this field need to be emphasized: First, delegating more tasks and functions to the council and the municipality will lead to greater integration of urban management and, as a result, greater efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. Second, the council and the municipality are the closest management level to the citizens and therefore have more legitimacy and efficiency than other state organizations in providing services. Third, it is evident that due to the centralized and sectoral structure of government in Iran and due to the lack of understanding of mutual interests between the municipality and other service institutions, the possibility of automatic formation of coordinating mechanisms and relevant institutions- based on the strategy of the lead organization or voluntary delegation of functions from state organizations to municipalities- will not be possible. Therefore, the only way to achieve this goal is to convince the central government (cabinet and parliament) to change their attitude and issue political and administrative mandates at the highest level to form this type of inter-organizational coordination mechanism. Fourth, a pilot transition to integrated urban management, either through the transfer of responsibilities to municipalities or through the assumption of the role of the lead organization by the council and the municipality, is better to start with metropolitan municipalities due to the need for high organizational capacity. 

Based on the arguments presented in this article, compared to all existing organizations, the city council, and the municipality have the most appropriateness for the leadership role of organizations active in urban planning and management.

Today, climate change has become one of the most serious challenges for cities around the world, especially in developing countries where urbanisation is rapidly growing. Urban centres must be prepared with the right tools to deal with the effects of climate change. Also, some of the methods used to manage cities so far must change, because cities emit more than 70% of the greenhouse gases in cities. The city of Tehran is also facing some of the devastating effects of climate change such as land subsidence, rising air pollutants, severe storms, dust, and shortage of water resources, with their associated problems exacerbated over the past two decades. Urban development plans play an important role in mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change. In this research, using the content analysis method, 6 criteria and 31 indicators have been used to evaluate 8 development plans of Tehran in terms of climate change effects. Three-point coding was used to score each of the indicators. The results show that the development plans of Tehran during the last two decades have made relative progress in terms of reflecting the effects of climate change and strategies to deal with them. Findings indicate that among the studied plans, the second and third five-year development plans of Tehran with 58.06% and 56.45% respectively have the highest rates, and the plan of reducing air pollution in Tehran and the comprehensive plan of Tehran with 17.74% and 19.35%, have the least attention to the effects of climate change.

Urbanization and climate change are two global phenomena and are inherently correlated. Land use, as one of the most important factors in this field, affects climate change in various ways. One way to manage this issue is to use multilevel climate governance, which provides a flexible conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between cities, regions, and national governments related to mitigation and adaptation strategies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the laws related to land use according to the criteria of the governing by authority in the framework of multilevel climate governance in Qazvin urban region. In this study, the method of documentary research and the technique of systematic review of texts and in order to comply with the criteria of the governing by authority and legal materials in the laws and regulations, the comparative-analytical method has been used. In this way, 10 laws regarding the existence of legal articles were evaluated, in which local government officials have been given authority in the field of land use planning. The results of the study indicate that ther are different challenges such as the impact of policies and strategies of development documents on decisions, differences between decisions and upstream documents, differences in the type of reference review and licensing, legal gaps in related laws and inconsistencies in implementation in the field of land use planning in Qazvin urban region, and some decisions are based on less delegated authority at the local level, and the resulting actions are more vulnerable.

In our country, during the last few decades, proposals have been made to improve the system of urban management in order to overcome fragmentation and achieve integrated management, but none of them have been implemented. Despite various debates, especially by politicians and executives, which have been done by using the terms such as coordinated urban management, integrated urban management and monistic urban management, clarity of them and organizational structures necessary for their realization are not provided. The main subject and purpose of this article is to examine the structures of coordination and inter-organizational integration and to evaluate the overall appropriate structures for achieving integration in the country's urban management. This evaluation has been done by designing the features of several structures and explaining the appropriateness of each of them with the existing context of Iran’s urban management. In this article, and with a deductive method, it is claimed that the structure or model of the “lead organization” is suitable for the transition to integrated urban management in the country. It seems that the structure of coordination among the organizations, which is called the “Lead Organization”, is most in line with the political and administrative structure of the country's urban management system. In this structure, the council and the municipality take the leadership and directing all the responsible institutions and organizations in the management of cities. The results of this study show that the municipality (council and city manager) in Iran, for various reasons such as being multi-functional, placed-based, democratic and elective institution, more than other public and governmental institutions have the most competence to assume the role of the lead organization in resources and organizations coordination of the city. It is possible and practical to undertake such a mission to achieve greater coordination in the management of cities, even without transferring more tasks to them, which has always faced resistance from public service organizations. Several arguments were put forward to justify the lead organization as a proper and preferred model of coordination and integration, the most important of which is the ability to implement it with less organizational change and at the same time more effectiveness than other studied models. This proposal can be justified by relying on the intrinsic values ​​of local governments on the one hand and their functional advantages, in comparison with other institutions and actors influential in urban management, on the other hand. Values ​​such as democracy and public participation, efficiency and local autonomy, which can be achieved by empowering municipalities as the main institution of urban management, and other functional advantages that balance the leadership of the urban management system, in competition with other existing institutions, in favor of municipalities. These advantages are multi-functionality of municipalities, their place-baseness, responsibility of municipalities along with the state institution in providing public goods and perceptions and public opinion, which holds the municipality responsible for improving the quality of urban life and achieving important cross-cutting goals.

Urban management is a necessity in integrating and coordinating the urban system. One of the requirements of efficient and effective urban management is moving towards good urban governance, which is impossible without the three components of transparency, accountability and participation. One of the proposed solutions in order to increase public trust and create greater interactions with citizens for municipal management bodies and specifically municipality and the Islamic council of the city, is preparing a set of transparency instructions for the performance of urban management system. Instructions promotes transparency and raises public awareness towards governmental and nongovernmental organizations. In other words, transparency is a constructive element in raising trust in organizations, which will be able to bridge the gap between urban management authorities and the public. The main components of this instruction are economic information, citizenship, laws, regulations supervision, control, human resources, and urban studies. The research saught to do an applied study through survey research method. In this research, interview with experts and professors in urban management was used to collect data, and MAXQDA software was used for data analysis. The findings of the study indicate that the level of transparency in urban management of the country and the city of mashhad is inadequate, and to solve this problem, preparing a comprehensive instruction for transparency is manatory. Finally, the aforementioned transparency instruction was adapted for use in Mashhad’s urban management system by conducting interviews, analyzing interviews data, and reviewing documents, laws, and regulations.

Since the 1980s, local government systems in Europe have undergone significant institutional changes and territorial reforms. According to Wollmann (2008; 2012), these reforms seek to address two main issues, namely the lack of accountability and transparency (democratic deficit) and the inability to deal with social, economic and environmental problems (functional deficit). Some also believe that the expansion of local government reforms is due to the fact that this level of government is most affected by the continuation of the global financial crisis and austerity policies (Bouckaert and Kuhlmann, 2016; Gardner, 2017). The bulk of these reforms in European countries with different political and administrative systems, whether federal or unitary, as well as transitional systems in Eastern European countries, have focused on strengthening local executive and political leadership through the reforms of administrative structures, decentralization and increase of local autonomy (Ladner et al, 2016; Ladner et al, 2015). To this must be added changes in the local government types. In Iran, above-mentioned democratic and functional deficits have led to various debates and research on the institutional, financial and operational dimensions of the local government in recent decades. These include Barakpour and keivani, 2016; Barakpour and Asadie, 2011 and show different and complicated problems in the country’s local management and leadership. Political, functional and territorial fragmentation, unsustainability of municipalities’ revenues and, generally, inefficiency of local leadership are regarded as instances of these problems. The main purpose of this article is to investigate the typology of urban management system in Iran and the trend of its changes utilising historical and actor-centered institutionalism. According to this approach, three main stages in the establishment and development of the local government system in Iran can be distinguished and differentiated. The first period (1905-1930) returns to the Constitutional Revolution more than a century ago and the transition from traditional government to rule-based government and the formation of modern political institutions. The second period (1930-1978), shortly after the Constitutional Revolution, begins with the establishment of the Pahlavi regime and lasts about five decades. The third period (from 1979 to present) relates to Iran’s revolution of the 1970s and the establishment of the Islamic Republic four decades ago. Each one of these periods highlight different forms of the distribution of power between the central and local levels of government as well as the relations between legislative and Executive bodies. Analysis of the relationship between the main actors of power at the central and local levels indicates the general characteristics of the local government system in each period. The results show that stability in the horizontal dimension and fluctuation in the vertical dimension of power relations, central government interference in local affairs, the lack of political resolve in decentralization, The Vague Prospect of Reforms in the Local Government System and Continued Procedural and Substantive Problems are the most important points in relation with urban management in Iran, especially in the contemporary era. 

Public Participation is a local, diverse, complicated and dynamic concept. So, the existing theories in the field of public participation in urban planning which has been developed in the global North countries are not in the line with the characteristics of the planning environments of developing countries, moreover they have not enough efficiency in these countries. Whereas, in theory, most of the research noticing to public participation in the urban planning environment in Iran have adopted the positivist approach to evaluate the existing theories and have aimed to determine the Importance of known variables and their impact on public participation. In the other part of these researches have been tried to evaluate the consequences of participatory processes. These researches attempt to deal with this complicated and abstract phenomenon through shrinking it to numbers and figures within the framework of existing theories, without considering the characteristics of planning environment. Accordingly, there is a contradiction in understanding that is riddled with misunderstandings and ambiguity about the concept of participation and its effectiveness in the urban planning environment in Iran. From an empirical point of view, due to the essence of this concept and the variety of its understanding and practice in different structures, the contemporary experiments that are based on the theories, models and experiences of other countries, over-reliance on the techniques of participation and merely emphasized on the objective conditions of the formal structure of the planning environment, not only have not decreased the gap between theory and practice, but also have resulted in practice in trapping participation into a vicious and faulty cycle. Therefor this research tries to recognize the informal structures of urban planning environment which affect public participation, through discovering the experience of people and planners in public participation and the meaning of it in the urban planning environment of Iran. This research can be categorized within the interpretive paradigms. Epistemologically, it emphasizes on the interaction between the researcher and the participants and the closest possible objective distance. This research uses ‘manifest inductive qualitative content’ analysis methodology. Data gathering has been done using in-depth unstructured interviews. Choosing participants (interviewees) has been targeted towards developing the concepts and continued until theoretical saturation. 22 individual in-depth interviews and 2 group interviews have been conducted with planners and people who had experience in participation. Being aware of the interactive characteristic of the concept of participation, some field surveys have been conducted during the procedure of the study in order to develop the concepts further. The findings of the study demonstrate that the most important concept in the understanding and practicing of participation for the people and the planners, simultaneously, is “refusal from participation”, which is a different concept than the concept of refusal argued in former theories in the field of social sciences. Finally, by achieving an in-depth understanding of the components of the participatory planning environment, this research, that has considered the current conditions of the planning environment of the country, underscores the areas requiring intervention to fill the gap between theory and practice in participation.

Excessive attention to the potentials of religious tourism in Mashhad has led to the unbalanced distribution of tourism services. The goal of the present research is to investigate the effects of the political economy of Mashhad religious tourism on the unbalanced distribution of tourism services. In order to achieve this goal, the unbalanced distribution of tourism services in Mashhad is firstly explained based on the Mashhad urban database. Then, by interviewing people familiar with the political economy of Mashhad, the effects of religious tourism's political economy on the uneven distribution of tourism services are explained. The findings of the study indicate the role of religious tourism actors and the political economy conditions prevailing in religious tourism in intensifying the focus of tourism services around the holy shrine of Razavi. Of the most important research strategies, the establishment of integrated tourism management, the preparation of a comprehensive urban tourism plan in Mashhad and the promotion of the level of participation of private sector investors and civil society in the context of Mashhad's political economy can be noted.

In recent decades universities are pushed to provide services to commercial or governmental stakeholders rather than the civil society. In Iran, even, the commercial services have not developed satisfactorily. In this situation a strategy for promoting the position of universities is to provide voluntary social services within the educational and research activities. This article is part of an attempt to introduce such services to the urban planning postgraduate programs of two schools in Tehran. Although, this attempt was successful in some aspects, it could not satisfy the participating professors. To find the reasons, the pragmatic foundation of academic services has been reviewed and the review showed that provision of civil services necessitates holistic cultural communication with people. An interdisciplinary workshop was held for examining the quality of the cultural communication of the faculty; and some interviews were conducted with some of the attended lecturers and professors. A narrative analysis of speeches, interviews and communications was then conducted by using a framework devised for the assessment of universities’ public communication on the basis of Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality. It identified that the organizational culture of the faculty has paid little attention to the aesthetic aspects of communication; also while the school has critical attitudes, theoretically, it is practically confined to formal structures and has little competence in critical action. The article suggests a framework for a substitute organizational narrative that may promote the aesthetic interaction, and suggests that other disciplines evaluate their social relations aesthetically, too.

In recent decades, urban tourism has led to various spatial evolutions in the holy city of Mashhad. Excessive concentration of key actors of Mashhad urban tourism on the potential of religious tourism caused to the lack of optimal attention to the potential of other types of urban tourism. It is tried in this research with a descriptive approach, to study spatial effects of urban tourism attractions on Mashhad tourism services. For this purpose, the spatial data of the Mashhad urban database has been used. The results of this study indicate the significant spatial effects of Razavi Shrine on the spatial distribution of tourism services studied in this study. Compared to the Razavi Shrine, other tourist attractions have had a different effect on the spatial distribution of urban tourism services in Mashhad.

Abstract Population increases day to day and causes some difficulties which are more noticeable, especially in urban areas such as Tehran as one of the most populated cities in the world. Nowadays, these difficulties highlights the role of sustainable development. Needless to say, inequality in urban life is sign of failure in fulfilling of sustainability development. Based on multidimensional features of sustainable development paradigms and existence of different attitudes, it is difficult to have a perfect and multidimensional consensus in this field. Different attitudes and evaluation of sustainability methods signify the substantive dimensional issues such as environmental, social and economic features. In many societies, despite the resources, high-quality environment and high rate of social and economic features, failure in reaching sustainable development goals can be observed. Thus, it seems that investigation of of dimensions and indexes of sustainability and holistic attitude in this field can provide a new attitude towards societies. Attaining sustainability in this field needs a holistic cognition of the existing condition of the society for planning and giving strategies to reach advance rate of sustainable development in society. The aim of this study is to investigate the sustainability of urban life in Districts 7 and 22 of Tehran municipality with different attitudes by considering dimensions of sustainability in terms of substantive and procedural criteria. Substantive criterion includes environmental, social and economic indexes and these features not only exist in deep layers of society but also can change according to other conditions and are affected by sustainable development policy. Another criterion which is normally ignored in the evaluation of sustainable development, is procedural index which is formed by the indexes acting independently as a political process in society. In this regard, library and ocumentary studies, field observation, questionnaire and interviews were employed. The collected were analyzed by SPSS software and statistical method. The results show that District 22 is better in terms of both procedural and substantive indexes compared to District 7. Analyses show that District 22 not only receive high amount of investment in sustainable development by the local government (district municipality) but also supports some capacities which exist in the region. In addition to heightening the quality of management and local government, this district creates new capacities and helps in increasing the level of society.

Zoning, which is considered as an approach to guide urban development, was brought up in the early twentieth century. Although the rules resulting from zoning have had positive consequences, there have a number of drawbacks such as urban sprawl, urban fabric disposal, inner city travel increase etc. In the meantime, appropriate forms for development and connection between public and private spaces have been disregarded due to consumedly concerning land use. The form-based code is an approach which was presented for solving this issue. The present study is regarded as applied research due to its external purpose, and as descriptive research due to its internal purpose. The transact approach has been applied in order to organize the case study, and data collection has been done through interviews, questionnaires and participatory meetings. According to the research purpose, which is to codify rules for urban development of the case study, namely district two of the city of Babolsar, the district was at first divided into T-zones on the basis of the defined criteria. Then, the Rules and Regulations were developed by analyzing large-scale and small-scale elements of the case study, and also by investigating the application of visioning findings by the rural-to-urban transect approach. Based on the results of the analyses, three zones (T3, T4 and T5) were defined in district two of Babolsar; The Rules and Regulating plan, which is a detailed equivalent to the Illustrative one, has been presented according to these T-zones. The results of the present study indicate the fundamental differences between traditional zoning methods and form-based code, most notably are as follows. Attention to future developments according to requirements; which explains that the emphasis of the form-based code method is to determine the important and influential generalities in the form and shape of the environment by using these rules. Accordingly, suggestions will be made in the form codes of the proposed foundation for future developments and the characteristics of these developments. For example, due to existing features, shortcomings and potential ones, the type of possible development is identified in the upcoming plans (traditional development, business center development, transport-centric development). Zoning mode; which emphasizes on the zoning of the city based on existing and proposed accesses in the zoning of Babolsar city, as discovered in its detailed plan. Accordingly, the city is divided into 3 districts and these areas into 11 neighborhoods. In the proposed zoning of this area, based on the form-based codes, factors such as population density, construction, residential, open space, usage, etc. are considered. In fact, emphasis has been placed on the zoning formation based on the extent and severity of the urban areas, so that the proposed laws and regulations for the zones are more coherent and coordinated and the possibility of realization is provided. Preparing the terms; which include the common zoning rules that are in fact the output of comprehensive and detailed plan, while the rules for zoning the form of its foundation in the form of a project are sat and developed. It defines the criteria according to the cognition performed in the three phases of the region. In this plan, there is no need to take a long time such as what happens in preparing a comprehensive plan, and detailed plan. The average time for the process of preparing, approving and communicating both comprehensive and detailed plans of the city was about 4 years, because studies of both plans are based on the status quo, and normally the presentation of a project with more than one year of existence is inadequate. Group participation; which includes attention to participation in the formulation of rules and regulations in form-based codes. While in the standard terms and conditions emphasizing that the writing of the rules and regulations should only be done by the experts, the use of stakeholders and stakeholders is reduced. Coordination with future plans, that explains that in fact, the foundation codes are guides for future development in the form of projects and plans. Utilizing and emphasizing the prospect sector in formulating the terms and conditions of form-based codes act as a guide to future development within the scope. The perspective of this approach will determine the general framework and future development framework, and next projects and plans will be based on the participation of different groups in the vision of the region. Differences in development control practices; which controls building regulations from the height of the building, the occupancy level of the building, along with the density of residential units per unit area. Whereas, in conventional zoning, emphasis is more on occupancy and construction density. Flexibility; which ultimately explains that increased flexibility in terms and conditions considering the prediction of zoning flotation rules for some buildings that these terms are less relevant in conventional zoning.

 Over the past few decades, studies on local communities have been increasingly developed. In these studies, there is an emphasis on the role of social interactions between community members and the bottom-up approaches to encourage local communities’ participation and identify human agents on community level. Amongst the most recent approaches is community resilience. Despite considerable progress in defining community resilience and its attributes, there are several ambiguities in the theorization of this concept. Due to the nature of resilience as a complicated and multi-dimensional concept, which is strongly linked to the cultural context of a society, the investigation of the beliefs, attitudes, and values of stakeholders is essential in its conceptualization. Thus, this study conceptualizes community resilience and develops a framework for resilience assessment through the qualitative analysis of various stakeholders’ viewpoints and experiences in regard to the matter. Although, before entering the research field, diverse studies related to this concept were reviewed. After reviewing the literature on community resilience and its conceptualizations, research method is presented. Then, the findings are discussed, and lastly, conclusion is presented. The current literature on community resilience mostly focuses on the reaction of communities to the external risks, pressures, changes, and stresses that threaten their welfare, physical and mental health, and identities. The majority of these studies examine the local and small communities with limited geographical extent, such as neighborhoods or small towns. Finding appropriate indicators for resilience assessment highly relies on developing an appropriate conceptual model for conducting the research on community resilience. Thus, after reviewing the prior conceptualizations, an initial conceptual model was extracted. However, this diagram is merely a primary model and, due to the exploratory nature of the study, it is modifiable, and its components can be eliminated or added during the study process. Since community resilience is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon, which is significantly affected by the stakeholders’ attitudes, it can be defined differently in diverse communities. Therefore, it is essential to target the identification of participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and values. It is also necessary for the researcher to develop a close relationship with the participants, and he/she has to consider the participants as collaborators. In order to achieve this goal, this study utilized the interpretive paradigm and qualitative research method. *Corresponding author: Email address: melika.amirzadeh@gmail.com Several in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders including local residents, government officials, non-government organizations, consulting firms, university lecturers, and researchers. The residents were recruited via available sampling technique and other participants were recruited via purposive sampling technique based on an initial list that was developed including key stakeholder categories. This was followed by sequential sampling to identify more participants relevant to each stakeholder group on the list. The snowball sampling began with the recommendations of the first group of respondents. Lastly, to be able to include stakeholders outside the social network of the first respondents all key stakeholders on the initial list were also contacted. Each interview was completely recorded and during interviews notes and memos were written. The gathered data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using ATLAS-ti software. ATLAS-ti was mainly used for accuracy and comfort of data analysis process. There were three main steps in data analyses: 1) the initial coding of interviews’ texts, 2) the concepts’ categorization and themes’ identification, 3) the reduction/ modification of codes and themes to achieve the research model. Case studies were two local communities in the vicinity of Madies (neighborhood aqua-ducts from Zayandehrood River) in Isfahan, namely Abbasabad and Barazandeh districts. Overall, 32 interviews were conducted from May to September 2018. The average time of each interview was 57 minutes. After initial content analysis, 96 codes were extracted. Following several reviews and modifications, some of these codes were combined and integrated into mutual categories. The study conceptualized the resilience of both cases in two major social and communal levels. Additionally, 48 sub-themes and 10 major themes were identified. Therefore, this study confirms the prior conceptual frameworks. However, some other themes and sub-themes also were identified in two selected communities. The main themes of social level include urban governance, economic situation, sustainable development, and laws. The major themes of local community level consist of economic, socio-cultural, political (local governance-institutions), natural, spatio-physical, and informational and communicational. The main difference between the final model and the initial model involves the addition of social level and its sub-themes. In addition, social and cultural domains were combined, and according to the data analysis, spatio-physical domain was added to the model. Finally, due to the critical role of informational and communicational domain, it is placed in the center of the final model. Fig. 1. Isfahan’s Resilient Communities Framework Recently, many studies have examined conceptualization of different natural and urban systems’ resilience. One of the recent approaches in the resilience literature is community resilience. Despite developing various community resilience frameworks, few studies have highlighted the role of stakeholders and just few of them have focused on a unique slow-onset hazard, such as drought or rivers and aqua-ducts’ drying up. Whereas, resilience is a complicated and multi-dimensional concept that is strongly linked to the cultural context of a society. Thus, this study studied the stakeholders’ beliefs, attitudes, and experiences about the main contributing factors to the resilience of two diverse communities in Isfahan. The study conceptualized the community resilience of the selected communities in two major levels. These levels included society and local community. Additionally, 48 sub-themes and 10 major themes were identified. The main themes of social level critical for community resilience include urban governance, economic situation, sustainable development, and laws, and the major themes of local community level consist of economic, socio-cultural, political (local governance-institutions), natural, spatio-physical, and informational and communicational factors. Amongst all of the identified themes in this study, the most contributing factor to the resilience of selected communities in Isfahan is socio-cultural domain. This domain included 16 sub-themes and 289 quotations of all the 32 conducted interviews. Lastly, it is suggested that the qualitative research methods be utilized by researchers working on development of urban and community resilience frameworks. Keywords: Community Resilience, Resilience Conceptualization, Qualitative Content Analysis, ATLAS-ti, Isfahan

To learn participatory and pragmatic urban planning, students have to engage with the society in real and ultra-disciplinary settings. In some universities, such an opportunity is provided through provision of voluntary civil services. But this kind of services has not been included in the official programs of the urban planning in Iran while the highly centralized academic administration makes any formal alteration very difficult. The aim of this article is to examine the possibility of introducing civil services within the current administration. It was pursued through an action research which tried to establish service at studio level. This kind of service is mostly known as “service-learning”. A review of the literature showed that service-learning in the field of urban planning suffers from the isolation of universities from the society. This problem manifests itself at two levels: the administrative structure and the professional techniques of participation. Focusing on the professional level, the pragmatic formulation of democratic engagement of universities is reviewed. Using this foundation, an alternative method of participation based on the analogy and metaphor is introduced. This method was adopted, reflected on and reformed within three semesters of action research. The final edition of the method satisfactorily eased the technical problems and justified the voluntary service for students within the current administration. But the collaborating professors rejected the sufficiency of the mere method, without structural modifications. The probable reasons for that rejection are discussed for further studies.

The performance and duties of the mayor may vary widely based on the different conditions. The procedure of electing mayor is a crucial factor in the performance of mayor. In general, there are two main procedures for electing a mayor: direct election of mayor and indirect election. In Iran mayor is appointed indirectly by the city council. This model has caused different problems in city management in Iran.A comprehensive analysis of the procedure of electing mayor in Iran, comparing it to this procedure in other countries could be useful to make a decision about what could be the most appropriate procedure in Iran. In this research, the performance of the mayor in different countries has been compared, by doing a comprehensive study of countries, including their governmental system, partisan system (in macro level), and the statutory position of mayor (in micro level).

This research is a fundamental one, which includes a descriptive method by using qualitative comparative method in analyzing the countries. Interpretive method was used to analyze the interview data.

The power of networking of the mayor is one of the factors that improve the efficiency of urban management. According to studies, direct election of the mayor makes the mayors have better interaction with government levels, therefore, the direct election of the mayor can play an important role in improving the networking and efficiency of mayors. In Iran, the mechanisms for monitoring and balancing between the council and the mayor are not clearly defined, therefore, because directly elected mayor gives mayors more power, the clarity of the laws to supervise the mayor by the council is important and sensitive.

According to the findings of this study it could be said that direct election of the mayor can increase the efficiency, responsibility, coordinating and power of the mayor. Moreover, if along with that other changes would happen, such as competence and duty of the local government, procedure of discharging and appointing of mayor and his/her cabinet, clarity of rules about checking and controlling of mayor by the council, elimination of unstable incomes from the budget of municipality, and elimination of distinct structure of managing city, could proliferate the performance of the urban management system and mayor.

In recent decades, Mashhad has experienced increasing spatial changes in its public services development. Unbalanced distribution of Mashhad public services has created various issues for tourists and residents. The research pursues two main goals. One goal is to investigate the spatial correlation between public services and tourism attractions and tourism destination of Mashhad city. Another goal is to investigate the spatial inequality between urban areas in access to public services. One goal is to examine the spatial correlation between public services and urban tourism services on the one hand and the spatial correlation between public services and urban tourist attractions on the other. Another goal is to investigate the spatial inequality between urban areas in access to public services.For this purpose, it is attempted to calculate the indicators of access to public services, tourism services and tourism attractions of Mashhad city by a descriptive approach. These indicators are calculated using the inverse distance weighted interpolation (IDW) technique based on Mashhad urban database data. Then, using factor analysis and cluster analysis techniques, spatial correlations between indicators are tested. The results of the research indicate a significant spatial correlation between access to public services and access to tourism services and tourist attractions of Mashhad city.There are also spatial inequalities between the central areas of Mashhad city compared with the marginal areas in access to public services. These results show the significant spatial effects of urban tourism on the spatial development of public services, especially in the central areas of Mashhad city.

Positive consequences of citizen participation in planning process are irrefutable. Over the last few years, most countries have been considering citizen participation in planning, as they attempt to provide the grounds for public participation at different levels of planning and decision-making. While the concept of public participation has been developed in a piecemeal fashion in developed countries and while it is in line with their social, economic, political and cultural structure, its application to developing countries with numerous planning-related problems (e.g. poverty, rapid urban development, inefficiencies in service provision, infrastructure and institutional frailty, etc.) without due consideration to the characteristics of their planning environments, may not lead to much significant success. Achieving public participation in these hostile contexts requires either a reform in existing procedures and structures (i.e. a long-term strategy) or maximization in application of citizen participation capacities in existing planning procedures and structures with an emphasis on the role of planners as the key players. This research aims to introduce a conceptual model for analyzing the effective factors of participatory planning in the planning environment. In this regard this work is an attempt to study the models and theories related to planning environment, decision environment, planning system, and planning culture in general. It further offers a primary and temporary framework for effective participatory planning factors by surveying two kinds of research: (1) research that directly or indirectly mentions the effective factors on success or failure of public participation, and (2) research that introduces some criteria for evaluating participatory planning (from process- or result- viewpoint or both). In order to identify the effective factors in participation realization, and to better unite practice and theory in this matter, the proposed framework of basic factors seeks to incorporate normative and instrumental benefits of participation to provide a pragmatic, moderate, and genuine understanding of citizen participation in the form of contextual variables and potential impacts. Finally, to reconsider the primary conceptual framework and offer a conceptual model of participatory planning, the effective factors on the realization of public participation have been examined in the planning environment model. Based on the nature of participation and the influences it attains from informal structures, the submitted conceptual framework emphasizes both formal and informal structures of planning environment at six analytical levels: external planning environment consists of two analytical levels of: (1) government (e.g. political sustainability and stability of politics, commitment to public participation processes, economic structure, etc.), and (2) participants (e.g. motivation, skills, knowledge and experiment, social capital, etc.). Internal planning environment consists of three analytical levels of: (3) planners and planning institutions (such as professional ethics and commitments, norms and cognitive frameworks, accountability, etc.), (4) legislations (e.g. incentives and deterrent policies, rules and regulations in the field of public participation, etc.), and (5) mechanism and procedures (such as representativeness, accountability, providing sufficient information, timing, etc.). The sixth level implies (6) external changes, like globalization, the impact of technological changes in information and communication. This conceptual framework can lead to identification of the limitations in Iran’s planning environment in the field of citizen participation. The components of the model can further be reviewed according to Iran’s planning environment specifications.