Journal of Spatial Planning
Year:2015 | Volume:19 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

According to the 20-year perspective of country, by 2015, Iran has to be converted into a country with such features as being away from poverty and discrimination, justified distribution of the income, and equal opportunities for all the people. Accordingly, the economic policy makers of country, in adoption of the subordinate legislations of the perspective document, have emphasized on consideration of the laws facilitating and accelerating the achievement to the documents of the perspective by induction of the balanced development and reducing the regional gaps via improvement of the administrative system, and enhancement of the executional organizations performance. After passing of 8 years from notification of the perspective document, the comparative analysis of the economic indices of the provinces could be a proper tool in assessment of the level of achievement to the goals of the perspective document. The research method of this study is descriptive- analytical and the research has a development type. Field library method was applied for data collection. The results showed that despite the legal responsibilities of country to provide optimized administrative system for all the provinces and justified distribution of the public resources between them to reduce the development gap, the deprived provinces of the country such as North Khorasan has been provided with different and unequal levels of administrative system and country credits.

Geographical space is a performance production of many factors in which policy Institution and formal institution’s function and its indicators (government and consequently states) influence a lot on its formation quality in the view of spatial justice’s; that is why understanding the semantic field of spatial justice is due to understanding the interaction relation between policy and space. Geographical or spatial justice is a relative balance of comprehensive indicators of development (economic, political, cultural, etc:) in geographical spaces and places (micro and macro) with the corresponding indicators of development in national level.Since making the foundation of fair space needs to design an appropriate pattern for evaluating the measure of its realization and annual changes, and the literature review showed that up to now, there has been not a quantitative and comprehensive model designed for spatial justice measurement; therefore, the main goal of this research is to design an operative pattern to measure spatial justice (study case of Iran). This research with a descriptive and analytical approach and with a developing and practical approach is seeking to answer the following question: “How can we continuously measure spatial justice in a country in the form of a pattern?” The results showed that with considering the negative and positive role of octet factors and their relative indicators, we can develop a software to continuously measure spatial justice in countries.

In recent years, strategic planning has been developed in line with participatory democracy and communicative rationality, and then criticized for not providing a practical methodology. Some scholars such as Gavent, Cornwall and Ataov argue that we should conceptualize “Action Research Approach” as a methodological solution to implement strategic planning and communicative rationality. Action Research Approach concentrates on mutual learning, and involves interactions between the multitudes of actors. Nevertheless, they have just focused on using the approach in a single geographical scale, while implementing Action Research Approach in one scale depends on other ones due to interdependency of the scales and essentially the multi-scalar character of places. It is, therefore, essential to develop an interrelated scalar approach for strategic planning and Action Research Approach by considering inter-scalar interaction and plural dimension of scales. Hence, this article outlines more spatially-extended vision of Action Research Approach using spatial pluralism alongside the concept of "planning with scales". The aim of Spatial Action Research Approach is to equalize power, knowledge and decision making relations spatially, and to improve them democratically.

Nowadays, the importance of solving urban problems from the smallest unit, the neighborhood, has been obvious for planners. Gaining knowledge of sustainability and moving towards sustainable development have been in focus for decades. Sustainable neighborhood is introduced as the foundation of sustainable urban development. Neighborhoods attempt to appropriate their structure according to the needs of today's residents, and approach again the components missing since previous times. Historical neighborhoods that suited the needs of their residents were formed and became responsive to most of the needs of their residents. The present study aims to measure and assess sustainability indicators on the neighborhood scale, in neighborhoods of the historical texture of Yazd city (Iran). To achieve the above objective, fuzzy logic was used to measure the sustainability of neighborhoods. The results showed that neighborhoods of the historical texture are not appropriate in terms of sustainability conditions because these conditions are poor and below average. Among the nine historical neighborhoods, Godal-mosalla neighborhood, with a value of 0.474 as compared to others, is in a better condition. The next ranks belong to Sheikhdad, Fahadan, Shessh-dadgiri, Poshte-bagh, Gazargah, Gonbade-sabz, Dolat-abad, and Zartoshtiha. It is obvious that the current situation is not confirmed by the sustainable neighborhood criteria and sustainable city approach, and the city managers have a long way toward achieving those approaches. Therefore, improving the unsustainability of historical neighborhoods in four dimensions, namely economic, environmental, physical and social, with an emphasis on "justice" particularly in unstable neighborhoods should be of priority for promotion.

Concurrent with the environmental crisis, the quality of residential environment has been found as part of overall concept of the quality of life. This concept, as a reflection of all aspects of personal well-being, includes all variables that affect the satisfaction of humans. This study assesses the environment quality in the neighborhood of Imamzadeh Yahya as a part of District 12 Tehran.This is an applied study that uses descriptive and analytical methodology. We collected the data by completing 316 questionnaires. Using the cocaran equation indicated an 316 persons was an appropriate sample size for our study. The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were determined by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (it was about 0.65, which is moderately favorable). The results indicated that the physical characteristics and their relevant indicators (in compare of tow other characteristicss i.e. functional and content). Had the lowest level of quality; while the content indices, which single-samplet test showed their meaningfulness from the citizens’ perspective, had higher levels of quality in relative to the rest.Finally in spite of the significance differences of various features, in general, there was a significant relationship between the satisfaction with the quality of urban environment and the residential environment, So, the current status of the quality of environment in the studio neighborhood is at moderate level, and by more accessibility to the studied services, the quality of environment will be more increased.

The present study was designed to evaluate the trend and pattern of changes in urban growth in Karaj city over the years 1989-2013 applying the landscape synoptic analysis approach. Accordingly, landscape maps of three frames of the satellite image of the TM sensor of Landsat taken in 1989, 2001 and 2013 were prepared using the post-classification comparison method. Then some composition and configuration-based metrics including number of patches, patch density, percentage of landscape, largest patch index, landscape shape index, edge density, contagion, and shannon’s diversity were calculated at two class and landscape levels, and their changes were examined. The data collection methods were the use of library resources, satellite imagery, topographic maps, and field visits to the region. The results of synoptic analysis indicated that although the landscape of the city during the first period (1989-2001) has experienced a different change trend compared with the second period (2001-2013), generally, the landscape of the region under study has become more fragmented (the number of patches have increased from 1612 in 1989 to 2024 in 2013), more complex and irregular in shape, more disconnected in continuity of patches, and less diversified in terms of land use/land cover types at the end of the 24-year period. The results also revealed that the spread of man-made areas has caused an increase in fragmentation, irregularity and complexity of patches, and a decrease in the total area of agriculture class of the region; if this process continues to exist, it may result in a serious decrease in the uses and services of the ecosystems, especially in agricultural use.

What is emphasized today in managing urban affairs and introduced as a paradigm in managing cities is utilizing of good points in the governance pattern in which the government, citizens and private organizations participate in a horizontal and extra - section course. Accomplishment of good urban governance in managing the metropolises of Iran like Tehran requires materializing citizens in participating in different aspects. In recent decades, the great changes made in the style of life have also changed the structure of neighborhoods, meanwhile by proposing the standpoint of developing neighborhood as a view that sees all problems of the cities by regressing to the neighborhood purport, they are free to utilize the inborn powerful forces and social assets in order to deal with the problems. Citizens are the main players in developing stable urban approach. Based on this approach, organizing the city affairs, eliminating the difficulties of the city and the neighborhoods rely on the neighborhoods, participation. The present research deals with investigating to develop the neighborhoods of city with an emphasis on the pattern of good governance in Region 19 of Tehran.The assessment tool in this study is the questionnaire with items designed for each index to sample the sample the citizens of region 19 of Tehran. The results from statistical tests showd that besides of existing meaningful relationships in the neighborhoods, standards of good developing and governance in the cities do not have a good status in most of the studied neighborhoods, and there is a meaningful relationship between the two variables, and the dependent variable is affected by the independent one. Also the results showed that indexes like legality, response, responsibility, participation and consensus orientedness are of the most important difficulties of citizens for reaching to a good state of development in the studied neighborhoods.

Urban land management is one of the key areas to achieve sustainable development in the countries. To achieve sustainable development goals, governments have to take specific policies appropriate to the conditions of the countries and their communities. In this paper, the urban land management studies have been surveyed by using Grounded Theory (GT) method as a method of qualitative research (by using the Atlas. Ti Software) and coding method of information. This research wants to investigate the government intervention in the urban land management. The main research questions are: 1) What are the reasons for the ineffectiveness of the policies of government intervention in urban land management and why?, and 2) What is the suitable model for appropriate government intervention in the urban land management? To answer these questions, a combination of quantitative methods - qualitative survey was used. The results indicated the absence of a clear vision, and consequently, uncoordinated policies and institutions, Centralized and non-participatory decision-making, and high incumbency without the necessary institutional capacity are reasons for the ineffectiveness of policy –making in urban land management. Therefore, the suitable model for appropriate government intervention in the urban land management is the integrated management of urban land (based on Provision of a clear vision, integrated strategic policy, and delegation of authority to the lowest level of local institutions along with the capacity building).