Understanding the factors affecting identity formation in the new city of Pardis

The increasing growth of the population and its concentration in metropolitan cities have led to the development of planned cities, the primary goal of which was to attract the population overflow. These cities were located near metropolitan areas based on the self-reliance and spatial organization principles with predetermined goals. This is an emerging phenomenon in the urban livability of Iran; moreover, an abundance of problems relevant to this issue has prompted researchers to pay special attention to different aspects of it. One example of this phenomenon is the planned city of Pardis, 17 kilometers northeast of Tehran. The authorities approved the location of Pardis in March 1990. Absorbing immigrants regardless of the social and cultural context of the destination and incompatibility of the population has led to the formation of identity diversity, identity confusion, and social isolation of residents. These residents did not develop a sense of belonging to this city and did not have the desire to experience the urban space. The purpose of this research is to analyze the components causing identity confusion formation in the current situation of this city.

This applied research follows a qualitative method and content analysis strategy. Considering the theoretical saturation, the target population is 28 individuals and includes two groups of urban management staff and citizens. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews. The data analysis was performed using MAX QDA, a qualitative data analysis software.

A total number of 430 codes were conducted in three stages. As a result, four primary and twelve secondary categories were extracted.

These showed that the citizens considered the lack of welfare services indirectly affecting the unwillingness to experience the urban space and the weakness in maintaining the population. On the other hand, the urban management staff considered the failure to fulfill the proposed recreational and tourist role for the planned city of Pardis by the upstream documents as the reason for the lack of urban identity by the residents and the absence of a distinctive image of the city