Sociological explanation of the effect of social capital on sustainable urban development

Sustainability is one of the issues that have been emphasized in recent years in various societies,especially in urban communities; in the path of sustainability, social capital plays a very important role. In sucha way that sustainable development has defined its role in the social environment, including social capital, byconsidering concepts such as social justice, comprehensive development and social welfare. Therefore, thepurpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between social capital and sustainable urbandevelopment, which used the theories of Giddens, Patenam, Fukuyama, Coleman and Driskel. The surveyresearch method and data collection tool, the questionnaire is reliable and valid. The statistical population iscitizens over 18 years of age in Tehran; the sample size is 393 people, which was obtained using Cochran'sformula and multi-stage cluster method. The findings showed that the status of the social capital index and all itsvariables (social trust, social participation, social awareness, social cohesion, sense of social belonging andsocial relations network) and the index of sustainable urban development and its dimensions (environmentalsustainability, social sustainability, Economic stability, physical stability, and institutional sustainability werebelow average and below average. Explanatory findings showed that social capital and all its dimensions had adirect and significant relationship and impact on sustainable urban development. The results of regressionanalysis indicate that social capital and its components together explain 0.601 variance of sustainable urbandevelopment. The highest direct effects on beta coefficient were 0.423 social confidence and 0.365 socialparticipation on sustainable urban development, respectively. In order to test the general and partial theory ofthe theoretical model, structural equation modeling was used. The high fitness indices indicate that the data arevery well supported by the theoretical foundations.