نشریه جغرافیا و توسعه فضایی
پیاپی 2 (Spring 2018)

In today’s cities, a primary objective of the distribution of public land use zones is to achieve spatial justice. This descriptive-analytical research aimed to analyze the inequalities in the distribution of public land use zones in Shiraz, Iran, from the spatial justice perspective based on library and field studies and with the help of GIS. The distribution of land use zones that accommodate urban services over the studied area was analyzed in a comparative fashion. After examining the disparities in the distribution of different types of public land use, it was found that the studied area has a better condition in terms of office, tourism and hospitality land uses than in terms of other land uses. Unfortunately, sports, education, and utility land uses were found to be in critical condition. The results showed that in Shiraz, district 1 has the highest public land use per capita and districts 4 and 5 have the worst condition in this respect. This suggests a lack of order in the spatial distribution of zones, especially in relation to population and land use.

In today’s world, spatial duality, growth of poverty-stricken urban districts and urbanization of poverty are considered as key destabilizers of sustainable urban development. As a result, recognition and discernment of such urban districts is a critical step for de-escalating poverty and inequality. The research methodology of the present study is descriptive-analytical. In the present study, spatial inequalities of districts of Tabriz metropolis is analyzed through utilization of analysis hierarchy process (AHP) and three main criteria of economy, urban physicality and population, which include 11 sub-criteria. According to the level of urban development, Tabriz metropolis is divided into five zones which are developed, relatively developed, medium developed, less developed and undeveloped. The findings of the study indicate the fact that there is a steep physical and class gap between undeveloped, less developed and other zones of the metropolis. Furthermore, quality and quantity of social, economic and physical criteria of undeveloped and less developed zones are lower than other zones. The present study believes that continuance of the present circumstances will exacerbate inequality and urban poverty and endanger sustainable urban development.

Establishing service centers in counties is among the main elements in improving social welfare. Nowadays, the majority of counties not only face a shortage in service centers but also an unbalanced distribution of services. In turn, efficiency measurement of counties regarding establishing service centers is in great importance. Hence, it is essential to improve the efficiency of urban services, while distributing services in a way by which all counties are provided with balanced services. This study aims to evaluate the efficient counties in terms of having service centers. Descriptive-analytic method was applied to achieve the mentioned aim. Data was also collected using documentary and library methods. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model is one of the effective ways to measure efficiency. The present study investigates the performance and efficiency of 17 counties in West Azerbaijan province in terms of having service centers using CCR and BCC models in data envelopment analysis method. The results indicate only 6 counties on CCR model and 7 counties on BCC model are relatively efficient and the remaining ones are inefficient. Finally, inefficient counties are modeled and the improvements needed for them to meet the efficiency boundary are explained.

Crimes are taken into account as the most common social problems observed in most cities across the world which can also bring about negative effects on mental, physical, and financial aspects of individuals’ lives. Thus, the aim of this study was to perform a spatio-temporal analysis of theft-related crimes in inefficient urban spaces and textures of the central part of Tehran (Districts 11 and 12), Iran. To this end, a comparative analysis research design was used and then the spatio-temporal patterns of theft-related crimes committed in the central part of Tehran were identified and investigated through statistical and graphic-based tests within the geographic information system (GIS). The information required in terms of the types and the number of crimes was also obtained via library method from the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Islamic Republic of Iran Police) in Tehran metropolitan area. The findings of the present study revealed that the crime hotspots had been distributed in a clustered pattern in the central part of Tehran. Moreover; temporal analysis of months, days of the week, and overnight hours of the opportunities for the occurrence of all theft-related crimes in the central part of Tehran demonstrated that the third ten days of the month, three final seasons of the year, and the first starting days of the week between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. were the peak times of the crimes committed. The findings suggested that the large number of urban worn-out textures, high levels of intrusiveness in these areas, presence of abandoned lands, as well as lack or absence of some public urban services and facilities for citizens could affect the geographical distribution of types and number of crimes as well as the formation of their spatial patterns. It was assumed that renovation and reconstruction of worn-out textures, organization of buildings including the removal of corners, unfinished buildings, as well as ruined ones, modification of the physical structure of residential areas, widening streets under 6 meters, creating passages for blind alleys, encouraging residents to maintain beauty and security through holding sociocultural programs, locating police stations, and establishing healthy entertainment and recreational centers to increase official surveillance in the central part of Tehran could reduce the possibility of the damage caused by such textures and finally lower crime rates.

Over the past few decades, democratic procedures have been raised as a core of most planning methods. In this regard, the present research adopts descriptive-evaluation methods and uses meta-analysis so as to review the democratic procedures at the heart of planning theories and democracy and to explore their paradigmatic interaction. The results of present research suggest that transition to post-modern era of planning perspective is accompanied by association between democratic procedures and certain subjects such as public interest, consensus, pluralism, uncertainty and agonistic arenas. In this regard, the theory of planning has experienced a paradigmatic shift towards agonistic planning which is a democratic accountability mechanism premised on intellectual support of agonistic democracy. In general, the theory regards the rational consensus of communicative planning as nothing but illusion and explains it as a strife to remove alternative discourses and eliminate democratic policy altogether. Compared with communicative planning, the essential notion of agonistic planning is turning hostility into agnostic and consequently replacing enmity by disagreement or aggression by competition.

The resilience of people to an adverse event in their city, community or environment reflects their flexibility in coping with or absorbing the incident. Achieving a resilient community requires attention to both physical and social aspects of resilience. In this quantitative survey, the spatial distribution of theft crimes in the districts of the city of Varamin were analyzed with the help of nearest neighbor index (NNI) and kernel density estimation (KDE) methods, and the social and physical aspects of resilience were evaluated by the use of questionnaires, official reports, and public records. The results showed a relationship, with a correlation coefficient of -0.344, between crime rate and resilience, which indicates that the communities that enjoy a higher resilience have a significantly lower crime rate. The rate of crimes varied with social, economic and physical characteristics of districts, and while the crime vulnerability indicators of peripheral districts were mostly physical-objective and were formed based on the concept of crime prevention through environmental design, the vulnerability indicators of the central districts were both objective and subjective and belonged to the social dimension of resilience.

Inequality in many countries is considered a major challenge to development, especially for those countries whose sovereignty includes vast geographical areas. These inequalities are a serious threat to obtain balanced development of regions, and makes it difficult to achieve national unity and integrity. So, addressing the issue of spatial justice and, consequently, spatial inequality in urban issues has been of great significance. This research has considered spatial analysis of inequalities in Tabriz metropolitan by considering social indices in 2011. In this applied research a descriptive-analytic method was used. The spatial auto-correlation technique was used to identify and measure the inequality by using hot spot analysis in ArcGIS software. In order to understand the scope of study from the perspective of spatial inequalities, data from statistical blocks of 2011 and nine social indices have been used. Also, findings of research indicated that Tabriz does not have a suitable status in terms of the distribution of social indices. According to the results, in the distribution of social inequalities, the largest number of urban blocks are related to very deprived and deprived blocks, and only a small number of urban blocks are completely possessed ones. Also, the results of spatial inequality zonation based on social indices revealed that completely deprived urban blocks have expanded in the marginal blocks of Tabriz, while moderate and completely possessed blocks are expanded towards the blocks inside the city. Also, the distribution of blocks in terms of desirability is in clustered form and has spatial correlation.

The current research intends to study the implementation of good urban governance. A descriptive-analytical research method was used and a questionnaire was employed for data collection. The population included the city of Qaraghaj and the sample included 361 citizens who were selected using Cochran formula. In order to evaluate the variables and reliability of the questions, Cornbach alpha was applied with a value of 0.904 which has always been estimated as more than 0.7. To measure Qaraghaj city in terms of indices for good urban governance, the following six criteria were included: responsibility and accountability, transparency, participation, justice, efficiency, effectiveness and law abiding. Likert scale was used to evaluate the variables. In order to analyze the data, SPSS and t-test were used. The results showed that the value of all criteria for good urban governance is lower than the average of Likert value. Thus, it should be said that Qaraghaj city has gotten an undesirable level of governance in terms of those criteria.

Informal settlement is the prominently dominating factor which contributes urbanization and provides the city's poor people with housing. In fact, these settlements are unreasonable and disorganized agglomeration places for low income people who live in deprived areas of the cities. Given the importance of housing, especially in informal settlements, the current research intends to outline the changes in housing indicators from margin to context and vice versa, especially in informal settlements of Tabriz metropolis. A descriptive-evaluative methodology was used together with a field- documentary method applied for data collection. Here, in order to analyze the data and weighting of housing indicators (data layers), ANP model was used with Super Decision software.Also, GIS software was applied for generating maps. Additionally, the statistical community of the research included informal settlements of Tabriz metropolis. The findings together with consideration of changes in housing conditions for the statistical blocks of the informal settlements indicated that , of 1318 blocks, 43/17% didn't change, 14/19% changed from deprived category to wealthy, 7/36% changed from medium to wealthy level, 15/85% changed from deprived to medium level, 5/16% changed from wealthy to medium level, 7/21% changed from medium to deprived level,and 7/06% changed from wealthy to deprived category.