JOURNAL OF URBAN ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
Year:2018 | Volume:6 | Issue:1 (21) |Papers Count:8

Dysfunctional interaction between municipality and city council can significantly undermine the performance of both institutions and thus the quality of urban management. This significant effect highlights the necessity of local studies on the pathologies of this relationship. The present research aimed to identify and rank the pathologies of the interactions between municipalities and city councils in one province of Iran. The research was carried out by the use of exploratory mixed methods in the framework of taxonomy development model. In the first phase of research, 51 council members and mayors in the studied province, who were selected by typical sampling, were interviewed. The findings revealed 31 pathologies in 6 major categories. Then, a questionnaire prepared for pairwise comparison of found pathologies was distributed among 64 mayors and councils members in the studied province. The results of the AHP technique showed that among the major pathologies in the municipality- city council interactions, insufficient institutionalization of municipalities and councils and legal gaps are the most prominent. Among the miner pathologies, deficiency of council and municipality laws, deficient expertise and experience of some council members and mayors, and absence of a coherent training program for council members in relation to their duties were found to be the most important factors undermining the interactions of city councils with municipalities in the studied realm.

In Islamic-political economy, urban sustainable development seeks to balance economic growth, ecological reconstruction, environmental protection and social progress. With descriptive-analytical method, this research investigates the impact of Islamic- political economy on the indicators of urban sustainable development. Data were collected by field studies and library method. Statistical population includes 386851 people living in the city of Zanjan.384 of them were selected as sample by using Morgan Table sampling method. Data were analyzed by one-sample t-test, path analysis, and structural equation modeling with SPSS and LISREL software. According to the results, the indicators of sustainable development in the city of Zanjan are desirable with t-statistic of 57.846 and the components of Islamic-political economy with t-statistic of 53.70.According to the path analysis, the effect of the total component of Islamic political economy is 0.306; therefore, the impact of Islamic political economy on sustainable development of Zanjan is desirable and significant. Thus, in order to improve the sustainable development of the city of Zanjan, it is necessary to respect citizenship rights, attempt to protect the environment, prevent renting and land use change and to increase knowledge and awareness of the people and insights of the authorities.

Adoption of inefficient policies in the field of distressed areas and low quality of livability, there is the need for new approaches in preparing and implementing renovation and improvement plans; so, city development strategy can be an appropriate plan to replace current plans. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the livability of distressed areas in Isfahan city as one of the elements of urban development strategy to use the approach in renovation and improvement. Moreover, its innovation is in addressing livability situation of independent distressed areas of the city to provide urban development strategy plan. The research method is descriptive-analytical and regarding the purpose, the study is applied. The data were collected using questionnaires. They were distributed and filled out in August and September of 2015. In this research, SPSS, EXCEL and Arc Gis software were used. The study sample included 385 residents of distress areas who were selected by stratified random sampling. According to the results, the distressed area of Isfahan, with an average of 2.49 and t statistics, -38.07 is not livable and the residents have evaluated the index of urban development strategy and its status undesirable. Moreover, the other three dimensions of economic, social and environmental state are unfavorable and the social dimension has had a more critical situation. Livability state is not the same in all parts of the area. There is also a significant difference between the distressed areas regarding livability. In the meantime, the distressed area of district 9 rather than districts four and eleven and the distressed area of district 3 rather than district eleven had more livability.

Today, city branding is important in urban spatial, cultural, social and economic structures for sustainable development, but this has been less used for several reasons. This paper discusses the identification of the causal circumstances of city branding and the analysis of its consequences and impacts in two qualitative and quantitative phases. The extracted model is based on the qualitative research method of data theory, using theoretical sampling method, and in the quantitative phase, city branding outcomes were investigated based on correlation method. The results of this study showed that, on the one hand, city branding is influential as a predictor variable for creating an ideal image and also on the level of satisfaction of residents living as criterion variables, and on the other hand, it has a direct and significant impact on audience satisfaction level including tourists.

One of the major challenges facing managers and urban planners in the third millennium is increasingly development of informal economy. Tehran Metropolis is not an exception and it has witnessed a growing expansion of the informal economy, especially vendors in the subway over the last few decades. Accordingly, this paper aimed to review the theories and approaches about the phenomenon of street vending and then analyzed the passengers’ attitudes towards women vendors as well as the characteristics and reasons for its spread in subway cars using a survey based on semi- structured interview. The statistical population includes of two groups of traveler women and street vendors of Tehran metro line 1 and the sample size is 75 and 82 respectively. The results revealed that passengers are more willing to buy from Metro vendors. The major group age of metro’s vendors are young, educated, often immigrants, married and heads of households. The most important reason for this activity is inadequate capital and lack of jobs in the formal sector. The respond of managers and city officials is often based on legalistic approach, prohibiting, and preventing their activities. Finally, in order to organize vendors in metro, solutions including efficient and comprehensive spatial planning throughout the country, facilitating self- employment, development of special places for vendors, monitoring and controlling the quality of products, training and empowering, licensing activities in specific places and renting metro stalls to vendors have been presented.

By expanding the scope and dimensions of urban life, municipalities, as the main charge of planning system and urban management, have great responsibility and commitment toward society and citizens. It is obvious that performing tasks and duties pertaining to municipalities requires financial resources and appropriate facilities. In our country, unsustainability of municipal revenues has been changed intoas one of the main features of cities’ finance. Thus, introducing sustainable source of income for municipalities can help remarkably functional independence and their continuity of servicing. One of the other problems of urban system in Iran is price volatility in the housing sector. This has resulted in deviation of capital toward housing speculation as well as disorders of other investment markets in the country because of structural problems of economy and inefficiencies of the government’s policies resulting in reducing investment in economic productive sectors, particularly in some years. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt practical strategies to control speculation activities and fluctuations in housing prices by policy- makers. A tax base entitled "tax on capital gains of housing estate" has been introduced by using descriptive- analytical method. It can follow two purposes in urban management and planning system simultaneously. The first goal is to create sustainable revenues for municipalities by using the capacity of transactions and exchanges in housing estate market. The second purpose is to create an efficient and effective tool in management and policy- making of housing estate market aiming to avoid speculative trading in this market. Moreover, this policy is in accordance with paragraph 17 of general policies of resistance economy referring to increase in the share of tax revenues.

Optimal tourism management, particularly in less-prosperous areas, is of great importance in absorbing capital from this industry. Chaharmahal and Bakhtiyari Province is one of the natural tourism areas in Iran. Despite having proper natural and environmental potentials to take advantage of tourism benefits, it has remained unknown and less prosperous; therefore, one of the approaches that can help to improve profitable managerial styles and attitudes. The present research is descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose, using David’s Comprehensive Strategic Management Model and SWOT technique to develop strategies and QSPM to prioritize selected strategies. The research data was compiled from 120 tourism experts, officials and managers of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari using Delphi technique. The results identified and determined mission, vision, qualitative and quantitative goals, and presented a strategy to develop tourism industry of the province. The results of evaluating the internal and external factors of tourism industry of the province indicated that the tourism industry of this province is weak and had no proper reaction to external factors. However, after identifying and prioritizing the strategies with QSPM matrix, it was specified that launching Internet sites for marketing tourist attractions in the province has the highest priority among selected strategies.

Population growth and urbanization, increase in number of private vehicles, low-width’s streets and lack of marginal parking spaces, especially in central parts of cities, have brought numerous problems for big and populated cities. Locating mechanized parking lots, which with occupying less area have a high parking capacity, is of the necessities of urban and traffic planning in large cities. The present study aims to identify, to weight and to prioritize effective criteria in locating of mechanized parking with sustainable development approach, and ultimately to prioritize potential sites for the construction of mechanized parking lots in central part of Qom. Therefore, first with regard to principles and components of sustainable development and applicable planning of urban land and transport and traffic planning and also with regard to characteristics of Qom city, three criteria and 16 sub criteria to locate mechanized parking lots have been chosen. The method used in this research for weighting and prioritization of locating criteria and sub criteria is Analytic Network Process (ANP) and fuzzy PROMETHEE. Therefore, after gathering the required data from the paired comparison questionnaire and calculate the total weight of the criteria, priority was given as followed: "environmental" criterion with weight of 0.629 in top priority, "economic" criterion with weight of 0.167 in second priority and "social" criteria with weight of 0.215 was located in third priority. Moreover, the result of ranking potential sites to construct mechanized parking using fuzzy PROMETHEE were identifies as follow: location in Keivanfar street is the first place, location in Sedaqhat alley in the second place and location in ice making factory in the fourth place.