Analyzing the impacts of social sustainability on the perception of tenure security in informal settlements: the case study of Koshtargah neighborhood in Urmia

Tenure security is a fundamental right of households lack of which leads to economic, social, psychological and political problems; thus, tenure insecurity has become a deprivation index in informal settlements. In recent years, special attention has been given to tenure security in improving informal settlements and thus was the research subject carried out by UN-HABITAT in 2003 and 2006. Scientific and practical experiences in tenure security index show that tenure security is a sense that cannot be achieved only by formal means such as ownership of a title deed. Tenure security is much more than simply examining legal title deeds and involves social, economic and life-quality indexes nowadays. Indeed, de facto and supra legal and perceived indexes along with legal ones, hold sway on tenure security scale in informal settlements. Moreover, sustainable development of informal settlements became one of the main topics of a seminar held by the Habitat in 2004 with particular emphasis on sustainable social development in order to empower residents and promote tenure security in informal settlements. At present, the application of mediating tools has become prevalent in the enhancement of tenure security instead of through legal procedures.. Based on the question of whether it is possible to consider social sustainability as a mediator tool, the purpose of this research is examining and evaluating the impacts of social sustainable development on tenure security in Koshtargah neighborhood in Urmia. Two main indexes have been used in this research to explain social sustainability: spatial justice (accessibility to urban services such as daily shopping centers, educational centers, sports centers, cultural centers, recreational centers, administrative services and remedial centers) and social cohesion (duration of residence, amount of power and solidarity of local organizations, the cohesion of family and friends and willingness of residents to work together in order to improve neighborhood). For Examining perceived tenure security in Koshtargah neighborhood, five criteria (concerns about informality of neighborhood, concerns about municipality dissatisfaction of residences in the neighborhood, concerns about homelessness after evacuation, possibility of forced eviction at any moment and concerns about forced eviction in next 5 years) are utilized. Research method was descriptive – analytical, and field data collection was carried out by means of questionnaire surveys. To analyse the data, ArcGIS techniques, fuzzy analysis and statistical methods such as Pearson correlation coefficient and regression were used. According to the correlation analysis it could be concluded that the impact of social cohesion on the sense of tenure security in Koshtargah neighborhood has been positive and significant; this relation was confirmed by significant degree of 0.000, confidence degree of 99% and correlation coefficient of 0.873. Furthermore, it could be concluded that spatial justice has had a positive and significant impact on the sense of tenure security in Koshtargah neighborhood; this relation was confirmed by a significant degree of 0.000, confidence degree of 99% and a correlation coefficient of 0.792. The results illustrate that by increasing social cohesion and providing justice in urban services accessibility, the perceived tenure security of Koshtargah neighborhood became stronger; thus it can be predicted that moving toward social sustainability promotes the sense of land and housing tenure security of Koshtargah inhabitants.