A Comparative Evaluation of New City of Shushtar Nou during Different Periods (1974-2015) and Proposing Urban Design Recommendations to Improve its Quality

The new cities of Iran can be classified into two groups: the cities made before and after the Iranian revolution. The main objective of city construction before the revolution was to accommodate the workers and office employees in the industry and agriculture sectors, whereas the new cities, which have been built in recent decades, are constructed to accommodate the overload of population in big cities. One of these new cities is Shoushtar Nou which has been built in 1974 in order to accommodate the workers of Karoon Agricultural Industrial Company and to improve the status of the agricultural sector, especially the sugar cane industry. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare Shoushtar Nou City in different periods (1974-2015) and to also give recommendations on urban planning to improve this city. The methodology of the study is descriptive-analytical and practical. The data was gathered through field study and library studies. In order to analyze the data, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used and to determine their weights, Export Choice software application is used. The findings show that the economic factors with a weight of 0.329%, ociocultural factors with a weight of 0.316%, political factors with a weight of 0.203%, and managerial factors with a weight of 0.152% have had an effective role in failure to implement the comprehensive urban plan of Shoushtar NouCity, respectively. Moreover, by comparing the current conditions of this city with the initial plan based on field study and documents, it was clear that the main difference involves failure to construct urban public places such as streets, sidewalks, the Central Mosque, city entrance square and so on. In the analysis of current land use and comparing it with the initial plan, it came to the light that most of the public uses of land have been reduced in number, such as green spaces, educational and sport uses and so on, and on the other hand, the land uses of military and police, street network, transportation and warehouse have significantly increased.