naser barakpour

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.

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.

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.

The authors of this article maintain that the current territorial policy in Iran has resulted in a number of issues, including political and functional divisions, flawed mechanisms for coordination and cooperation between managers and officials, disregard for economic efficiency and effectiveness, legal ambiguity in the system of administrative divisions in the country, lack of public participation, and, most importantly, lack of a clear and well-crafted policy for making decisions about dividing or merging territories. In light of the above-mentioned issues, it can be said that the merger of territories could contribute positively to some territorial divisions in Iran if it is carried out in a well-planned manner, some authority is delegated to local bodies, fewer political consultations are made, and the influence of unofficial factors becomes less strong.

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.

 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

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.

Residential satisfaction has been a major and popular research topic for the following reasons. First, individual's evaluations of housing and neighborhoods determine the way they respond to residential environment and form the basis for public policy feedback. Second, residential satisfaction is recognized as important components of an individual's quality of life. Furthermore, high satisfaction among residents encourages them to stay on and induces others to move in, and low satisfaction with the neighborhood environment urges current residents to move out.
On the other hand, although physical characteristics of housing units are known to be very effective in the residential satisfaction rating by many scholars, it should be noted that the dwelling unit itself is not the only factor of satisfaction but it is only a subsystem of the whole residential livability system. In this sense, humans interact with multiple components in their living environment, and continuously influence the environment and are affected by it. This interaction alters an individual’s feeling toward their residential environment. thus, this interaction can be examined in the form of a system that includes residential units, neighborhood and neighbors. In regards to neighborhood satisfaction, although some researches find that the physical characteristics are the most important factors and planners support the importance of physical characteristics, residents consider social factors more important in judging a neighborhood. The current study assesses the level of residential satisfaction in two neighborhoods of Tehran and compares them to create a basis for evaluating urban policies and decisions in recent years and shows the effectiveness of different factors on the satisfaction of residents of different neighborhoods by comparing them. For this purpose, the operating model to measure satisfaction was derived by examining studies of different researchers in the form of approaches (including the belief-affect approach, the commitment approach and the availability approach), factors (individual's characteristics, characteristics of residential environment, feeling and perception of residents etc.) and models (Amerigo model, comparing the level of satisfaction in culturally homogeneous and heterogeneous neighborhoods model etc.). In the proposed model, attention has been paid to all three levels of person, dwelling unit and residential environment and factors which affect satisfaction have been classified under five categories: objective criteria related to the individual, objective criteria related to the environment, objective criteria related to the dwelling unit, subjective criteria related to the individual and subjective criteria related to the environment through a survey questionnaire. Satisfaction levels of residents of neighborhood 1 (located in region three of Tehran municipality) and residents of neighborhood 2 (located in region 11 of Tehran municipality) were compared with each other. A total of 100 questionnaires were completed for each neighborhood. Findings of the study show that the highest and lowest satisfaction in neighborhood 1 were linked to the objective criteria related to the dwelling unit and objective criteria related to the environment and in neighborhood 2, to subjective criteria related to the environment and subjective criteria related to the individual. Overall satisfaction in neighborhood 1 (between moderate and satisfied) was higher than neighborhood 2 (between dissatisfied and moderate).

Sprawl is a form of fast and scattered growth of urban and metropolitan areas that in some cases even connects the city to rural areas. In current times, there are many cities throughout the world that have missed a substantial amount of their natural resources and valuable open spaces due to improper utilization of land and sprawl. Hence, not only the life conditions of their dwellers have been degraded, but rather the opportunity of their future generations for taking advantage of city resources have been diminished. This sort of growth that has many adverse effects on ecological, economical and social aspects of a society could be seen in some cities of Iran as well. One of the cities in Iran that suffers from sprawl is the city of Karaj. Until 1966, this city had a “Garden City-like” appearance. However, because of the growth of immigration and demolition of gardens and green areas from one side and also conveyance of agricultural water to the city of Tehran, collapse of gardens and emergence of new neighborhoods, uncontrolled construction along the Tehran-Ghazvin Connecting Road, and finally joining of several peripheral urban systems of the city of Karaj, it has been transformed to the today city of Karaj. One of the main challenges of this city is its physical growth that has caused its gardens and agricultural lands to demolish and the cost of urban services to increase. Its other problems are scattered construction sites, heavy traffic, loss of identity and social characteristics of neighborhoods, pollution, destruction of natural sceneries, decrease in quality of life and so forth. One way of confronting this unorganized growth is taking Smart Growth principles into consideration while preparing city development plans. Smart Growth is one of the most significant forms of development against sprawl and with its focus on city revitalization and expanding transportation alternatives; it pursues creating social places in a way that people show inclination to live in. This paper has been prepared with the aim of assessing the proposed development plan of the city of Karaj based on Smart Growth indicators, and results in designating of planning priorities for the city of Karaj by applying Smart Growth principles. In order to assess the aforementioned plan, at the phase of determining the Significance Coefficients of criteria and sub criteria, the AHP technique has been used and at the phase of determining the extent to which this plan has brought sub criteria into consideration and as a result of this, determining the planning priorities based on smart growth criteria, a simple Ranking Method (Ranks from 0 to 7) has been utilized. This research reveals that the above-mentioned plan has obtained 52.84 percent of the total score. In other words, the plan relatively conforms to the principles of Smart Growth in terms of the development of the city. However, it is clear that this plan shows more strength in some indicators and sub-indicators, and less in others which demonstrate the planning priorities. The most important weak points of this plan are mainly related to the subjects like: plan monitoring, equal access to information, and social participation in the process of making decisions, and almost all of these have roots in the system of preparing development plans in Iran.

The shortage of space for development, especially in central and dense textures of large cities such as Tehran, is an important challenge for urban planning. Using complete existing potentials and optimizing the space use in the condition of shortage of space is a basic rule which is put forth within the framework of endocrine development. The zone 11 is one of the central districts of Tehran, which is facing the problem of shortage of space and inefficiency of its textures. The present article examines the redevelopment possibility of inefficient textures of zone 11 of Tehran. To achieve this target, first, the identification criteria of these spaces were specified. Then, giving weight to the standards by a group of experts, the whole textures(fabrics) of zone 11 were studied based on these standards within the framework of ArcGIS software. Afterwards, out of the quarters of the zone, a quarter with the highest rate of inefficient space and in need of red development was selected. In the second phase, that quarter was studied and prioritized based on the standards of determining the optimal location for different uses and types of development. In this phase, criteria of place selection were weighted based on AHP model within the framework of Marinoni program(one of the side GIS programs).The results of the research show that service-administrative and commercial land uses are the first and second priorities of redevelopment in Anbar-e Naft quarter. With regard to the standards of location finding, the existing of macro scale activities, arterial networks and incompatible activities, the residential land use is the fourth priority as far as redevelopment capability is concerned.

Municipality performance measurement and evaluation for services delivery can be done in two ways, based on objective and subjective perspective. In objective view, quality of services measured according to the certain standards and criteria. While in subjective view, citizen satisfaction and their feelings are determinant for quality of municipality performance. In present research, a model for evaluating municipality performance has been designed and implemented in two districts of Tehran, based on literature review and examination of other countrie's experiences. The main purpose of this study is assessing the citizen satisfaction with municipal services and also evaluating factors affecting it. In this research, satisfaction will be examined as a dependent variable. Urban public services including 17 municipality tasks and their quality are considered as independent variables which have direct impact on overall living environment quality and citizen satisfaction. In this survey research, the main and necessary data has been gathered by questionnaire. In this study, the impact of various factors on citizen satisfaction has been considered. The results indicate that citizen satisfaction level in both districts is close to average, but there are differences between two district residents based upon social characteristics such as age, education and gender on citizen satisfaction.

The present era can become an epoch in which public participation in planning and decision-making process and the future of urban community leads to a situation in which urban planners and public cooperate together in urban planning and community development plans. Turning ideas and participation theories in urban planning into practical techniques and approaches is very crucial because as long as these theories do not be objectified, they can’t be implemented. Moreover, according to diverse institutional and legal considerations in different countries, application of these techniques must be proportionate with these conditions. However, in Iran, practical approaches capable of turning theories and ideals into reality are not present yet. Accordingly, studying different aspects of public participation and trying to implement them is essential. In this paper after a brief investigation of participation theories, it has been tried to implement these theories introducing and benefiting from current techniques in pioneer countries in the field of participation. The main goal of the project selected as our case study, namely Amir-Abad, Golha neighborhood, is increasing quality of life using participatory approaches. The proposed factors are: safety and security, efficient transportation system, access to services, walk-able urban space and identity. It has been tried to use different methods to achieve participatory approaches. These are utilized in various steps of the project, filling questionnaires, interviewing with stakeholders and etc. in cognition step, using SWOT matrix in analysis step and setting up public hearings in designing process. The questionnaires were based on place check technique and quality of life criteria because place check can provide a focus for bringing people together to work in collaboration and can identify what is needed to be done in order to improve the place. This research shows that public participation is based on a non-elitist view of social progress. Good ideas are always generated from community, so ignoring people in urban plans leads to alienated public which feel that their views has been ignored and the plan has been imposed upon them. Successful participation process in urban plans in different environmental, social and economical conditions requires applying various levels and techniques of participation. The most important role of a planner in leading public participation in an urban plan is selecting the appropriate approaches and implementing them according to context and cultural terms. One of the findings of this research is that some of participation techniques cannot be implemented in our case study, so we tried to find out which approach is the best so that we can carry out a good participatory process. To achieve the mentioned goals, this paper has been presented in four sections. In the first section important theories in public participation will be investigated. In the second section three theories about levels of participation will be expressed. The third section offers prevalent techniques for benefiting from public participation in urban plans. At the end the outcomes of a practical experience in preparing community development plan in Amir- Abad, Golha Neighborhood will be presented.