ali zackery

Urban planning has undergone significant transformations throughout history marked by distinct eras characterized by shifts in planning principles, approaches, and objectives. In recent years, citizens’ participation and democratization of urban management have gained considerable attention and importance. It has become evident that imposing large-scale urban projects on communities without their input or involvement can lead to severe backlash. Traditional methods, such as offline consultations, co-design workshops, and surveys, have facilitated architects and planners in understanding and engaging with communities. However, advancements in technology and online platforms have opened up new avenues for harnessing the collective intelligence of entire cities and communities in the urban planning and design process. The presence of strong democratic institutions, respect for human rights, and participatory accountable governance are essential for enhancing people's lives in a sustainable manner. In an increasingly urbanized world, these factors contribute to unlocking the potential of cities, particularly through improved urban service delivery. Well-managed cities with enhanced services promote peace, security, and greater investment in human capital, thereby driving economic growth. Municipal governments that possess adequate resources and are accountable are more likely to provide timely and efficient services. Collaborative efforts among different levels of government and civil society contribute to optimizing service delivery. Transparent, accountable, and democratic institutions play a vital role in facilitating community participation in demanding and designing improved service delivery. Various models have been developed to expand citizen engagement in urban management. Cities should strive for systemic changes in decision-making processes related to urban planning, incorporating deliberative and democratic procedures. This paper introduced a novel model for citizen participation in urban management. 

This study adopted a qualitative, interpretive, applied, and cross-sectional research design. The statistical population consisted of municipality managers, NGO managers, and urban scholars in Isfahan City. A total of 15 experts were selected from this population using the snowball sampling technique and were subsequently interviewed. The collected data were analyzed inductively using a content analysis approach. To ensure the reliability of the analysis, 5 interviews were randomly selected and subjected to thematic analysis once again. This process aimed to validate the findings.To further enhance the robustness of the results, a fuzzy Delphi method was employed, involving 10 municipality managers and 5 academicians. The participants were requested to evaluate the relevance and significance of the identified themes, aiming to achieve a fuzzy consensus. Their suggestions and feedback were incorporated into the final model, thereby strengthening the overall quality of the findings. 

The data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The analysis revealed 55 basic themes, 15 organizing themes, and 5 global themes. The content validity ratio, which exceeded the threshold of 60%, confirmed the validity of the results. Furthermore, the results of the fuzzy Delphi method, after defuzzification, indicated unanimous agreement among the experts, thus affirming the reliability of the findings.Based on the research outcomes, a spiral-fractal model for citizen participation in urban governance was proposed. The model comprised 5 key elements: citizens, cituards, citgentsia, citally, and cityors. Cituards were citizens, who demonstrated slightly higher levels of engagement than the average citizen. They actively monitored the city, provided reflections, and followed up on their suggestions. Citgentsia were individuals, who contributed novel ideas and offered original recommendations to benefit the city. When the ideas of the Citgentsia were put into practice, they were referred to as citally within this model. The final level of the spiral-fractal model was occupied by cityors, who were involved, either officially or unofficially, in the theoretical and practical dimensions of all aspects of urban management.

Today, it is impossible to imagine a world without electrical energy and as the time goes by electrical energy will become more and more important. In the past few decades, the amount of energy consumption has doubled, among which the share of developing countries such as Iran is higher than developed countries. Therefore, analyzing the behavior of electrical energy consumption and the variables affecting it can give a proper vision of the future and make decision-makers and managers ready to face possible challenges. In this manuscript, firstly the data concerning the electricity consumption in agricultural, industrial and residential sectors were used to forecast the base consumption scenario for Isfahan in 2031. Second, a list of trend-defying events which can potentially affect the base scenario and the probability of their occurrence were made through a scoping review and expert interviews. Finally, probabilistic modified trend method was deployed to create three scenarios for electric energy consumption of Isfahan in 2031. These scenarios are: 1) there is electrical energy but not much 2) get used to black-outs and 3) essentially green. Narrative scenario can help decision makers to decrease their mental distance with future possibilities, result in strategic decisions and galvanize action.

Reviewing the history shows that corporate social responsibility started from an embryonic concept and grew over time and affected the identity of organizations, but there are still conflicting opinions about the dialectic between organization and society in the theoretical and strategic climate of organizations. In this article, for a better understanding of the history of social responsibility, a semi-structured literature review was conducted to have a big picture of the evolution of this concept over time. Then, according to the frequency of concepts in key articles, three main drivers of the domain of corporate social responsibility that can change the organizations in the future were identified. The main drivers are “inequality”, “climate change”, and “gender gap”. In the next step, we tried to present a picture of the dialectic between organization and society in the literature of this field by drawing causal diagrams between these drivers and other organizational and social variables. In the last step, according to these three drivers, inductive-normative scenarios of the future of the organization's social responsibility were presented. These scenarios include “egalitarian organizations”, “the biophilic organization”, and “gender-discriminiation-free organizations”.

Public libraries are faced with technological changes and unknown issues that can change their identity and mission in charting the future path for their role in social developments. In line with the use of new approaches to redefine the mission of libraries, the present research intends to provide a vision for Iran’s public libraries by using the implications of resilience theory.

This research was designed and implemented in the form of a three-step process: 1. studying the implications of the characteristics of a resilient system, 2. Environmental scanning through literature review by searching for research and review articles, books and reports in English language related to the subject indexed in Scopus and Google Scholar databases without applying time limits, and 3. prospecting.

A resilient library has the characteristics of diversity, changeability, modularity, acceptance of slow variables, intensive feedback, social capital, innovation, ecosystem services, redundancy and publics. Among the general examples of using these features in public libraries are: using technologies at different levels and updating resources and services and library space; intellectual and skill preparation of librarians and continuous monitoring of previous experience and knowledge and current conditions; dividing the library into different departments and its federal administration; Pathology in libraries and continuous identification and follow-up of changes, though small, in various dimensions of human, environment and technology; Follow-up by managers of the conditions of each department and continuous follow-up and analysis of users’ opinions in order to satisfy them; Providing a communication platform and providing social information services in order to strengthen social capital, social cohesion, and social justice; Innovation in the thinking and action of librarians and their decisions and services; and identifying and introducing the highlights of the library to attract more audience. The future library is a phygital platform and a built space for shared co-creation. Resilient library as an experience center is a point of access for citizens to emerging technologies and a platform for popularizing science and practicing civil epistemology. The future library has a modular management structure and is a place for learning, re-learning and more importantly going beyond previous learning.

Originality/value: 

Resilience theory has been developed to describe and address the inherent uncertainty and insecurity of major changes of systems, acknowledging that we live in a state of constant change and that there is no point in the future where we can expect everything to be static and optimal. take Therefore, libraries should not focus their energy on creating ways to continue the usual and traditional services in the future, but should look for ways to adapt intelligently to changes. The current research can be a good guide in this field for public libraries.

Lifestyle change means a change in various aspects of life, including cultural, educational, training, etc., and is one of the important issues in the classification of generations. Therefore, the lifestyle, mentality and way of thinking of different generations has always been a topic of interest for researchers in various fields. The aim of the present study was to provide a futuristic analysis of the lifestyle of the alpha generation and to investigate the role of the media in constructing this lifestyle and by using customary and inductive content analysis method and with a systematic review of scientific content about generations, especially the alpha generation, examined the lifestyle changes of this generation. The results showed that five central concepts of 1. technology, 2. games and entertainment, 3. family, 4. education and 5. employment are the main topics of study and analysis of the alpha generation, and the media quite clearly play an important role in all this dimensions. The alpha generation is the generation of the metaverse lifestyle, and the life of this generation will be going not only with the media, but also in the media.

In the last decade, there have been several challenges in the environmental, social and economic fields of cities, which have increased with the increasing growth of cities and urban population. But today, dou to the social and economic role of cities in communities, these urbanization challenges must be overcome with the help of urban development officials and sustainable solutions all over the world. In urban literature, there are many concepts and approaches to provide a picture of the future of cities that one of the most important of them is the concept of smart city. The present study, in the field of urban foresight, seeks to provide solutions for more effective foresight around the smart city of Isfahan in horizon 1420 according to this concept. The approach of this qualitative research is applied and in order to conduct this research in the pre-foresight stage, first, with the help of environmental scanning and library studies, various definitions of smart city were collected from differents articles. As a foresight stage, by doing backcasting for the smart city, solutions were provided for turning Isfahan into a smart city in the form of a roadmap. The necessary infrastructure for the production of renewable energy, increasing the ecological resilience of Isfahan and creating a basis for the startup economy are the most important components of the smart roadmap of Isfahan.

The irreplaceable role of cities in economic, cultural and political development of countries, their challenges and problems and the difficulty of their management has resulted in an increasing significance of theories, experiences and strategies concerning city transformation. In the relevant literature, numerous concepts and approaches try to offer images of future of cities. One of these concepts is smart cities. Also, participative foresight can play a role in creating future images of cities. This study seeks to offer recommendations on how to create local and brand-new images of futures of cities in Iran and improve the quality of urban foresight practices. A thick report of an event ethnography has been given from a foresight workshop conducted in Isfahan municipality about futures of Isfahan, 1420, based on observations, field notes by ethnographers and the theoretical interpretation of them. Utilization of participative deliberation and foresight techniques and event ethnography to create images of future is the innovative dimension of this paper. Adding materiality to future, deconstruction of technological utopianism discourse, conceptualization of foresight as a social capacity deriving from civic epistemologies and agonism, moving beyond used futures, and creation of neologisms can improve urban foresight practices.

How can schools prepare the future generation for the post-fourth-industrial revolution era whose main characteristics are vagueness, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. How can the essence of education change due to unprecedented changes? Despite extensive reforms in schools in recent years, the root assumptions concerning school, education, key skills and the role of teacher have not considerably changed and no paradigmatic transformation has been observed. This paper uses a future-oriented approach and bricolage method to study different components of education and their development. Deconstruction of fundamental assumptions of education including knowledge accumulation, standard examination, fixed hours and a factory-like conceptualization of school leads to an alternative vision of school as a “participatory workshop”. Interdisciplinary experiences, relearning and unlearning are theoretical foundations of such schooling system which prepares us for alternative futures with almost no resemblance to our past experiences. This paper tries to amalgamate futures studies, psychology, and sociology and education studies in an interdisciplinary manner in order to take a preliminary step toward enhancement of policies of educational system.

Nowadays, public libraries are going through a critical period and turning point, a time when from one hand and based on the environmental trends affecting them, can be a sign of their future elimination, or on the other hand if they enjoy an accurate picture of the future and adopt appropriate strategies, can provide them with a renewed vital opportunity. This issue is related to the necessity of addressing the future of public libraries with an alternative approach which is usually pursued in futures studies.

In the present study, by focusing on the scenario planning method and the Global Business Network approach to it, the effective environmental trends in the future of public libraries have been identified, and then, by using the method of futures workshops with a participatory action research approach and as well as the views of a selected group of librarians, administrators and active members of libraries, possible future scenarios of Iran public libraries have been mapped. Due to the existing restrictions, these workshops were held in the provinces of Tehran, Mazandaran and Fars (two workshops) based on the degree of libraries, and a workshop was also held for the managers and staff.

In each workshop, five groups designed totally 25 categories of fourfold-scenario based on the choice of two key uncertainties. The research team reached four scenarios through integrating and refining the groupschr('39') mentalities, based on the crossing between two high-frequency uncertainties: 1) manner of centralized or decentralized governance 2) the central role of book or chr('39')User experiencechr('39'). chr('39')Info feedchr('39'), chr('39')Book poolchr('39'), chr('39')Info diggingchr('39') and chr('39')Book mallchr('39') are the titles of these four scenarios. The first uncertainty concerns the focus or lack of focus on decision-making, policy-making, planning and implementation in Iranchr('39')s public libraries, which also affects their financial, budgetary and economic dimensions, such as their expenditure and income patterns. The question which the second uncertainty begs is whether libraries will remain in their current state, which is based solely on books, or whether they will move towards creating a new customer experience? The first integrated scenario, entitled chr('39')Info feedchr('39'), describes empirical libraries in the realm of state governance. The second integrated scenario, called chr('39')Book poolchr('39'), and depicts a book-oriented library in a state-governed environment. The third integrated scenario, called chr('39')Info diggingchr('39') and describes a privately owned empirical library. The fourth integrated scenario, called chr('39')Book mallchr('39'), depicts a book-based library which operates in a space dominated by the private sector.

Those studies thus far conducted in the field of the future of public libraries, especially in Iran, which have used the scenario approach, have not yet applied the workshop approach and participatory action research, which were used in this research.