Spatial Analysis of the Relationship between Social Capital and Sustainable Urban Development Case Study: Cities of West Azarbaijan Province

From 1970s onward, the concept and meaning of development was revised that the result of this change was the concept of human development. An important dimension of human development is sustainable development which emphasizes on changing human based view to production based view.Accordingly, physical capital is not the only investment in a country but also human and social capitals gain more importance and can be an essential tool with high capability and performance in clarifying and solving the issues and problems human society faced with, which provide the situation for achieving sustainable development. Hence, the concept of sustainable development, sees the environment health and tendency to sustainable development through the partnership of local organizations. This partnership will lead to social capital. This social capital must be with more per capita for the next generations comparing with today's generation. Social capital like the concept of physical capital and human capital refers to the characteristics of social organization such as networks,norms and trust which facilitates the coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. Social capital increases the benefit of investment in the field of physical and human capital. Nowadays, many of designers and planners know social capital as an important tool for sustainable development in the environment, social, cultural and economical field and have special attention on this issue and in practice consider social capital and sustainable development as supplement and related from different aspects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social capital theory and its relationship to sustainable development in the cities of West Azarbaijan province in Iran. Accordingly, first the various dimensions of social capital in the cities of West Azarbaijan province have been evaluated and then sustainability of the cities have been leveled and finally, the relationship between social capital and sustainable development in the cities of West Azarbaijan province is discussed. Geography and Development, 10nd Year, No.27,Summer 2012 2Research This is an applied research type and its study methods is descriptive – analytical and correlation. Statistical society is 36 cities of West Azarbaijan province for sustainable development based on administrative- political divisions of year 2006. The indices of urban sustainable development includes 8 features of population, social, economical, health-medical, cultural, urban infrastructure facilities and equipment, transport and communication and physical indices. The sample volume has been selected 384 people based on Cochran’s formula for the component of social capital. Component of social capital indices include 5 components of social participation, high interest to society, social trust, cooperation and assistance, family relations and friends. Sampling method to measure social capital is sampling with optimal allocation based on population of each city. Tool for gathering sustainable development data which includes 53 indices, are public census of population of housing, statistical yearbooks and relevant organizations and institutions. Tool for gathering social capital data is questionnaire. the questionnaire has been measured through Likert and a five-choice scale. The models of Tapsis, Entropy Coefficient and cluster analysis are used for analysis of sustainable urban development. Also for the relationship between the variables, the inferential statistical tests such as correlation, regression and path analysis were used.Discussions and Research findings show that from the view point of urban sustainable development, out of 36 cities of the province, Urmia city is placed at very high-level development and Mahabad, Khoy and Bukan at high-level development and 6 cities at medium-level and other cities are placed at low and very lowlevel of development, that shows a gap between the cities in sustainable urban development. From the view point of social capital, cities of Mahabad, Bukan, Urmia, Khoy are placed at very high-level, 7 cities at high-level, 12 cities at medium-level and 13 cities at low and very low-level. Findings obtained from field studies show that social capital in the cities of West Azarbaijan province is 2.96 that is 59.28 %, which its most part belongs to Mahabad city with about 76.6% and its lowest belongs to Firuragh city of about 48.4%. Also, Findings show that the relations of family and friends with 3.39 namely 67.8% has the highest and social participation with 2.66 namely 53.2 % has the lowest level of social capital. In terms of physical development, Findings indicate the development of large cities and lack of development of small towns, and in terms of social capital, larger cities likewise have higher social capital than smaller cities. In general, the results indicate that among the five dimensions of social capital, social participation, high interest to society, cooperation and assistance, family relations and friends have a significant relationship with urban sustainable development and social trust due to its weak relation with urban sustainable development is meaningless.The results show that the rate of urban inequality for sustainable development indices is 1.33 in the cities of West Azarbaijan province, that shows the gap between the components of urban sustainable development. Moreover, the spatial distribution of the development level shows development is very low in most cities. Also, in terms of overall development, the pattern of regional space in West Azarbaijan province is Core-Periphery. That is how much become closer to the big cities in terms of demographic, economic, administrative, the cities are more developed because most cities in the 3 province are small towns. Therefore, these cities are located at the surrounding areas of the province.Also, the top-down planning in the structure plan of the state and regions has increased the proscription of small towns. In total based on the results, we can say that component of the high interest to society with 0.395 has had the highest impact on sustainable development in cities of West Azarbaijan province. Finally, based on the existing facts, we can say that there is a relation between sustainable development and social capital to the amount of 0.67 with % 99 of confidence level.