Cultural Policy Making and Explanation of the Social Capital Application Model in Neighborhood-Oriented Cultural Development (Case Study: Neighborhoods of Tehran)

Introduction :

The appearance of Iranian cities has similar characteristics. So in most of them, the development of the city and the increasing use of cars has led to the disintegration of its old shape, so that its body has been unevenly developed in a new way in different parts. The way of evaluating urban environments today is such that human identity is ignored in them [1]. The disarray of cities, which is increasing day by day, while affecting the shape and density of cities and transportation, has also affected the social interactions of citizens, which results in the reduction of people’s sense of belonging to these cities [2]. For the changes of a neighborhood-oriented cultural development to be accepted by the public, it requires the social satisfaction of the residents and the qualitative improvement of the economic conditions of the citizens living in the neighborhoods [3]. This approach and at the same time, eliminating the problems of urban management, will happen if the management attitude is changed, so that power is decentralized and people’s participation in the neighborhoods increases [18]. The result of these efforts is improving the sense of self-belief among citizens and usefulness in their neighborhood; Therefore, social solidarity will result from creating neighborhood identity, promoting social responsibility, and eliminating neighborhood disorder. Participation in today’s conditions in areas such as reducing the workload of national levels compared to local programs, increasing informed citizens, increasing quality by doing things, providing human and financial resources for municipalities, reducing costs, increasing productivity, and contributing citizens to accept responsibility. It is important and necessary. The high importance of the present research is also based on this. In this regard, the current research seeks to provide a suitable model, which is carried out through a meta-composite qualitative approach, in addition to examining internal and external research in the field of social capital models in neighborhood-oriented cultural development.

This research is exploratory mixed research and a qualitative-quantitative combined method was used in its conduct. In the first step (qualitative step), the necessary data were collected by examining previous research in the field related to the subject of the study, as well as conducting in-depth interviews, then according to the grounded theory method, coding, categorization, and finally a conceptual model were presented. In grounded theory, as an exploratory-inductive research method, the steps of analyzing the collected qualitative data are performed in three steps: open coding, central coding, and selective coding: 1) Open coding is a process by which the features and dimensions of the specified concepts from the text are extracted and analyzed. In open coding, specific concepts are expanded according to their dimensions and characteristics, and then by subdividing the information obtained from the primary raw data, preliminary categories are formed about the phenomenon under investigation and to the question It deals with data, comparing cases, events and states of phenomena to discover similarities and differences. 2) In the axial coding, one of the categories that are under investigation and discovery (main dimension) and then other categories (components) are related to it (this method was used in the present research). 3) The process of determining the central category coherently and creating a connection between the central category and other categories is called selective coding. From the experts’ answers to 7 questions about the content, the relationship of the model with the purpose, and quality, Hoteling’s t-test was taken to evaluate the validity of the model. Kappa coefficient has been used to evaluate the reliability of the model. In the second step (quantitative step), data were collected through the distribution of researcher-made questionnaires and analyzed through structural equation modeling. It should be noted that the mentioned questionnaire is derived from the results of the proposed models placed at the center of the process. The statistical population of this research includes two communities, in the qualitative part of the research, urban management and urban sociology experts and experts in the academic community and urban management organizations of Tehran were selected as potential participants. Characteristics include having a university education related to urban issues, holding a managerial job related to the issue, having experience in doing collaborative activities in the field of urban issues, having enough opportunity and interest to conduct an interview, and the concern of the people are the criteria for selecting the interviewees. Due to the nature of qualitative content in this research and specific knowledge and data that were available to some key informants on the subject under study, we have used the purposeful selection sampling method. In the quantitative part, the statistical population includes the citizens of Tehran city, which was sampled in a random and non-targeted way. According to the population estimates of the Iran Statistics Center from the general population and housing census in 2015, the population of Tehran is 7992627 people, therefore the sample size obtained from Cochran’s formula is determined to be 384 people.

The results of the interviews conducted with the grounded theory method showed that the cultural policy model for the use of social capital in the neighborhood-oriented cultural development of Tehran includes 75 open codes, 24 core codes, and 6 selective codes, and in the quantitative part, it showed the results of structural equation modeling. that the value of the significance coefficient t related to the relationship between the main variables of the causal conditions and the central phenomenon; background conditions, intervention conditions, and central phenomenon with strategies; Strategies with consequences at the confidence level of 95% are greater than 1.96, and this indicates the significance of the effect of the variables of causal conditions with the central phenomenon; background conditions, intervention conditions, central phenomenon with strategies; Strategies have consequences. Therefore, all 6 variables are identified as main variables.

According to the findings of the research, it seems that residents’ satisfaction with environmental services and facilities has a direct relationship with a sense of social trust and citizenship responsibility. In the same way, there is a direct relationship between satisfaction with the set of services provided by the city administration and strengthening the sense of belonging to the place of residence and the use of social capital in the neighborhood. The result of this positive interaction is increased commitment to citizenship duties and acceptance of urban culture. At the same time, the satisfaction and sense of responsibility of the residents of the neighborhood are directly related to voluntary participation and easy acceptance of changes, and this will lead to the cultural development of the neighborhood. The social satisfaction of citizens alongside and in interaction with the change of urban management approach can strengthen the mutual relationship of social capital and collective solidarity. The neighborhood-oriented approach, with a change in the development approach from above, facilitating the ways of people’s participation at the neighborhood level and developing a culture of participation by the city management and citizens, will be a solution to the problems in the city and city management.