URBAN STUDIES
Year:2013 | Volume:3 | Issue:6|Papers Count:7

Unsustainable urban development is a major challenge of the third millennium. The main objective of sustainable development consists of meeting people’s basic needs, improvement of living standards, better management of ecosystems and a safer future. Sustainability in terms of economic, social, cultural, environmental, ans physical aspects of development requires the use of an efficient management system with enough power to attain these objectives. Management systems that are flexible, responsive, strategic, and justice-centered on education and awareness are the key limitations of existing programs in modern cities. Sustainable city with good socioeconomic characteristics such as affordable housing, poverty alleviation, equity-centered, having clean, safe, quiet, and charming space, is an ideal that is attainble with a dynamic management. This study is a descriptive analysis of the role of management in urban sustainability. For this purpose 82 indicators of urban sustainability were identified in Kermanshah and using factor analysis, the main factors affecting sustainable management of Kermanshah were evaluated. They were then reduced to 25 leading indicators and finally to the following five factors: Urban health, good government system, stable environment, good educational, and happiness which contained about 74.504 % of the variance of the variable. Urban Health with 25.4 % of the variance has an important role in urban sustainability. Thus, its major sub-components such as education, social well-being, safety, and social descipline can play an important role in achieving sustainable urban development.

The present article, while briefly reviews conceptual debates about the issue of citizenship education, attempts to introduce an empirical model concerning the education of youth their citizenship rights and obligations. In this regard, the establishment of “local associations of evaluation and research” is suggested as a kind of practical program to orient the youth with their rights and duties as citizens and to ease their entrance into social life as adult citizens. Then, several real life examples of such associations that have been established in other countries like the United States and England are presented. The research method is documentary. The results show that involving the youth in civic activities and issues through local associations of evaluation and research can increase their rate of participation in society and transform them from passive actors into active citizens who take control of their own destiny and help in the management of the society.

This article aims to study social and cultural factors that affect the formation of inner group social capital. To carry out this study, the ideas of Putnam, Woolcock, and Pootinga were utilized to form a theoretical framework. As far as research methods is concerned, qualitative conceptualization was used and Amos 16 was used to assess the fitness of the model. The model assumed that contextual structure of participation, value consonance, and influencing decision-making will affect bonding social capital. Contextual structure of participation had a direct effect of 0.322 on bonding social capital and through communicative characteristics and sense of need to religious consciousness had an indirect effect bonding social capital. Value congruence had no direct effect on bonding social capital but through communicative characteristics had an indirect effect of 0.06 on bonding social capital. Value congruence had a direct effect of 0.1 on need to religious consciousness and therefore indirectly had an indirect effect bonding social capital.

One of the factors that has increased the level of social well-being of the people is the use of transportation especially that of an automobile. But due to various social, cultural and economic factors, that has led to problems such as traffic violations and accidents in cities particularly the cities of the province of Kohguiluye and Boyrahmad. In this study the research population included all drivers aged 18 years and above who had a driver’s license of which, based on Cochran formula 368 individuals were selected as the sample. The theory of cultural lag provided the theoretical framework of the study. Different tests such as correlations, regressions analysis, the t test and path analysis were utilized to test the relationship among variables. The findings show that the variables years of holding a license (r:/165), driver’s mental state (r:./134), respect for driving laws (r:/197), social and economic status (r:/27), police law enforcement (r:/141), repairing of defaults of vehicle (r=/108), and the safety of roads and streets, (r:/219) were significantly related to accidents. According to findings the independent variables were able to explain 51 percent of the variability of the dependent variable.

As urbanization increases and metropolitan areas expand, social relations become more complex and therefore, the issues of safety and security are transformed from a simple physical sense to a more complicated sense in which economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions become very important. The present study pursues the basic question of “what are the most important social factors that can affect the sense of security in cities?” The research population consisted of all the residents of the city of Kerman who were 20 years old and above of which a sample of 530 individuals were chosen. Nanly’s measurement of social security was used which ranges from 1 (least security) to 5 (most security). Findings showed that both financial and physical securities of the residents of Kerman are about the average. The results also showed that the relationships between physical space (r=0.471), social space (r=0.419), watching domestic TV (r=0.572), listening to domestic radio (r=0.443), internet usage (r=0.332), socio-economic status (r=0. 613), age (f=9.14), female gender (f=4.19), male gender (f=4.26) and sense of security were statistically significant.

People’s social lives and their identity as citizens is due to the stability of society, hence social identity has precednece over individual identity. Accordingly, citizenship is defined as full membership in society and allegiance to social commitments and responsibilities that is manifested in social and political participation in society and government. In this way people without force bahave according to ethics and social responsibilities and puruse their own and society’s benefits. This research endeavors to investigate citizenship identity in old and new sectors of the city of Kashan. This study is based on a quantitative analysis of 260 questionnairs. Participants were selected by a quota sampling method and sample size was determined by employing a Cochran formula. It emerges that the average of citizenship identity and social linkage among people in old sector is more than people in new sector. Social trust is average in both groups. Citizenship identity is significantly related to social linkage and social trust in both old and new sectors. There is an inverse relationship between citizenship identity and education in both sectors. Additionally, this relationship is stronger in the new sector. Eventually, social linkage in the old sector and social link and education in the new sector have the most effect on citizenship identity.

This article will study the social and cultural consequences of urban spaces on women and girls in which the construct of social impact assessment was utilized. In this regard, the social consequences of shahr-e banoo complex was evaluated in ten phases. Deep interviews were done with 30 women including some municipality officials, women who made use of the utilities that this complex offered, including the library, and the neighborhood council. Some negative effects of this complex was that constrained women to these areas and prevented them from utilizing other public spaces of the city. However, positive effects seem to outweigh the negative ones such that strengthening the family, improvement of the relations between father and daughter, helping mothers in rearing children, reduction of some forms of deviance, enhancing social, psychological, and physical empowerment of women are among them.