A Conformity Evaluation between Urban Developments of Qazvin and Infill Development Strategies

The population of every urban community, especially in developing countries, has been growing more increasingly by immigration of rural population to cities rather than birth rate. This type of growth has led to an irregular outward trend in expansion of cities and, as a result, a horizontally dispersed urban development toward farmlands and annexation of surrounding countryside. On the other hand, considerable areas in downtown or early districts of the cities, however, are left undeveloped. Naturally, these undesirable conditions make Infill Development Strategies of high importance. Infill Development is one of the major methods applied to downtown development, improvement and compaction. Inside a city, there are a considerable amount of spaces, unused lands and abandoned workshop and factories with their urban infrastructures and installations, which Infill Development regards them as a wealth of opportunities for economic, social and environmental development. This method of development provides a thriving social interaction and retail trade through the increase of population existence and activity in the districts. It also enhances the community assets and improves the quality of neighborhoods by constructing parks, infrastructures, transportation network, art houses, and new shopping malls. Qazvin population has been continually increasing due to its geographical, political and economic situation. Meanwhile, natural and artificial barriers have drastically confined its development direction; therefore, it is especially crucial to consider Infill Development Strategies in its further development. In this research, initially, some useful indicators based on the principles of infill development have been introduced in order to evaluate the conformity between urban developments in Qazvin and infill development strategies. The indicators introduced areas of barren, disused, military and industrial lands in addition to population density, renewal of ruined areas, average number of floors, amount of licenses and capitation balance. Afterwards, the status of each indicator was studied between two comprehensive plans of Qazvin during 1369-1384, and then the effect of each indicator was analyzed and their capacity for utmost use of infill development was evaluated through conducting an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The ideal value of any indicator is achieved regarding the nature of indicators which is approximately near to zero or to the suggestions of comprehensive plan in 1365 as the base of this study. Analytical Hierarchy Process is a flexible, powerful and easy model to make decisions in situations which conflicting decision criteria make it difficult to choose between the various rival options. The Analytical Hierarchy Process method can be used in these issues because of the simplicity, flexibility of its usage, and its ability to simultaneously use both qualitative and quantitative criteria and evaluate the consistency of judgments. The findings of research illustrate the remarkable capability of Qazvin for infill development. The capacity which has not been exploited efficiently until now and the city suffers from ineffectively implementation of infill development. Furthermore, it is shown that there are areas such as barren lands, military areas as well as abandoned-ruined areas and locations with disused or misused activities which are capable for application of infill development and urban regeneration.