Iranian International Journal Of Social Sciences
Volume:3 Issue: 3, Summer 2013

The Iranian government has placed new emphasis on urban renewal through participatory approaches in recent years. The main target areas are called deteriorated urban fabrics, characterized by micro-lots, impenetrability, and lack of sustainability. In Tehran, renovation of deteriorate urban fabrics has been initiated through dedicated neighborhood facilitation offices. This paper analyzes the activities and achievements of the Khazaneh Facilitation Office (KFO) in Tehran based on information obtained from office records and first-hand experiences of the initiative’s manager and facilitators. Findings indicate that contradictions between the city’s detailed plan and deteriorated fabric designations as well as unresolved tenure/title issues can act as major obstacles to renewal. Yet, carrying out enabling initiatives, upgrading the built environment, and providing residents with renovation-related legal, social, and financial services can prove successful in gaining the community’s trust and jump-starting renovation activities. Due to low prices of land in Khazaneh in the initial period of KFO’s activities, the offered incentive package had not been automatically attractive to investors/builders for entering renovation partnerships with home-owners. Additional strategies were thus required, including advocacy and knowledge dissemination, encouraging investors/builders to pool resources, and developing large-scale commercial side-projects to activate renewal. The actual number of renovations directly managed by KFO remained low due to shortages of trusted investors as well as bank loans. Yet, as a result of a subsequent rise in land prices as well as side services provided by KFO, Khazaneh is now experiencing significant renewal activities.

The article addresses the mutual relationship between environmental improvements and improvement in social status of women. The main question of this article is: Are there any relationships between improvement in environment protection and promotion in the situation of women? The theoretical framework includes Hatfield’s view about the existence of communities between the public and private spheres on one hand and the division of labor theory by gender on the other. Answering the question the documents of some environmental projects in Iran have been chosen. The goal of these projects was to protect environment through local communities and non-governmental organizations’ participation. Content analysis is the method has been selected for implementing the research. A reverse questionnaire was prepared for data collection. The population includes 61 projects in various fields and locations throughout the country. The data indicates some kind of co-variance between the two variables namely environmental improvements and the social status of women in local communities.

The present study investigates the culture of development in Hawrami proverbs. Analysis of development-related variables is the basis of sociology. As collective phenomena, proverbs are part of the oral culture of a society and their investigation can sociologically explain cultural and social foundations of the society. This research attempts to specify 6 development-related parameters in Hawrami adages combining the ideas of Max Weber and the current viewpoints in modernization theory. Documented data is analyzed through content analysis technique. Statistical population of the study includes 4500 Hawrami proverbs 299 cases of which are analyzed as they involve development-related variables. Unlike the prevalent outlook in modernization theory that anti-development components have a significant role in local communities like Hawraman, research results illustrate that pro-development variables in these proverbs are more than anti-development ones and that Hawraman’s underdevelopment stems from the inconsistency between development programs and social and cultural context of this society.

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of security in social deviations among women of Babol city. Descriptive survey research method was used and the unit of analysis is 15-29 year old women that 284 women are selected on the basis of Cochran formula and using multi-stage random cluster sampling. The results show that there is a weak significant relationship between the independent variables of security, social control, socioeconomic base and the dependent variable of social deviations. Also, there is not any correlation among variables of social support, social trust, sense of social security and deviations. The analysis of multi-variable regression reveals that independent variables determine 16% of social deviations changes and also in the analysis of social security, social control and socioeconomic base are more influential in deviations than other independent variables.

Today's world has been the world of media. Today can hardly find a place that people are far and separated from the media and media effects. Practices, knowledge, tastes, and many teachings of daily life of every human, somehow directly or indirectly will be affected by what the media has covered. This article attempts to focus on national media audience on one hand and satellite television networks on the other hand according to the educational level of these two media audiences by the study of documents in the Centre of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, as well as explores in other writings and considers a historical approach in studying the desired phenomenon Comprehensively and sociologically. Findings of this article suggest that 79.4 percent of Audience in the age group of illiterate and uneducated are very high and high satisfied from TV programs, 15.6 percent have averages satisfaction And 7 percent have very little or no satisfaction. Among group of audiences that are in high school, 74 percent of respondents have too much or much satisfaction from the TV programs, 20 percent have an average satisfaction, And about 6 percent are little or no satisfied. However, among the audiences who have diploma, 66.6 percent of respondents have too much or a lot satisfaction from TV, 24.3 percent have an average satisfaction and 9.1 percentage of them have very low or no satisfaction. Eventually in the audiences group that are highly educated these results were obtained; 59.2 percent have very high and high satisfaction, 28.5 have an average satisfaction and 12.2 percent have little or no satisfaction. Thus these findings indicate that the more the audiences are educated, the less they are satisfied from the TV programs of Iran. Other findings on the other hand (are located in Table 2 in this article) in all years of survey and study indicate that the more the level of education of audiences has increased, the more the satisfaction of them from satellite network programs has grown.

The aim of this paper is investigating and studying of geopolitical dimensions of Russia in the Caspian Sea. Russian post-Soviet geopolitics invokes euroasianism as its inner rationale and meaning, as a greater good that imbues pragmatic, interest based politics with a sense of mission. Eurasianism as a particular tradition of theorizing Russia’s identity and place in the world has a momentum of its own that transcends the pragmatics of Russian post-Soviet foreign policy. Although Russia remains a strong regional power with firm position on international level it is still hard for Moscow to accept loss of the position of great power.Therefore, Russia makes a swirl in its foreign policy in the Caspian area to create new strategies and stimulates Russian government to get back on the region and Once again take their sovereignty back through the use of military, political and economic power according to the priorities of the Eurasian and geo-economy policy integration in the countries of the Caspian region. The methodology of the paper is descriptive- analytical and it attempt to demonstrate this hypothesize that in Russian Eurasianism foreign policy, the Caspian Sea and Caspian region have a significant value at the perspective of geopolitical potentialities.

The objective of this article is to present the established components with regard to the visual quality and legibility of Isfahan city according to Lynch’s theory. Data was gathered in Isfahan mainly by way of observation and interviews. Additional information was obtained from historical data and urban documents. In the opinion of the citizens, the Zayandehrood River, as a natural urban component, plays the most prominent role in the image-ability and legibility of the city. Moreover, the Siose and Khajoo Bridges, being symbolic urban components built on the river, play a vital role in the visual quality of the city. Thus, it can be said that a creative mix of natural and man-made urban components could advance the impression of the city and also instil the citizens of Isfahan with a feeling of pride.