Evaluating Sustainability of Land Development Plans from Social and Physical Aspects; Case Study: Golestan Town of Shiraz Metropolis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

2 M. A. of Urban Planning, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

3 Ph.D. of Urban Planning, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

4 Ph.D. Student of Urban Planning, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Central Branch of Tehran, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Land use development plans have become common, as a new activity in urban planning procedure in Iran since 1985. In this kind of plans, the government decided to provide some kind of urban facilities such as road, electricity, water pipe and urban services such as schools before land delivery. Large part of our cities are formed based on this plan and mass volume of activities, used resources and special process of these plans make it necessary to evaluate them from different aspects. One approach for evaluating these plans is sustainable development. This approach was considered from 1992 and it has some emphasize on reserving resources for future generation without any harm to the nature and other components of it. Sustainable development aims to carry capacity of natural systems together with the social, political, and economic challenges faced by humanity. Sustainable development has been described in terms of three dimensions, domains or pillars. In the three-dimension model, these are seen as economic, environmental and social. Environmental aspect could be divided to man-made or physical and natural environment. While sustainable development is the dominated approach in recent years, there are limited resources which evaluate land development plans based on sustainability. This research evaluates the land development plans based on approaches of sustainable urban developments. This research is limited to social and physical aspects, and by using factors in this two dimensions, evaluation of land development plan has been done. This research would answer to the following questions:
• What are the criteria and indicators for evaluating sustainability in social and physical aspects?
• Is the land development plan in Golestan town is based on sustainable development (in social and physical aspects) or not?
A descriptive method and questionnaire were used to collect and analyze the data. Also Excel and SPSS were used for analytical purposes. Questionnaires were designed on the basis of the literature review and theoretical framework of the study and the table of criteria and indicators which show sustainability. Social criteria in the research are: livability, identity, security, diversity of social groups, comfort ability and peace, social justice, satisfactory and participation. Physical criteria include: quality and facility of accesses, quality of environment, quality of man built area and energy consumption. As most of the indicators were quality data, it was necessary to use a Likert scale to be evaluable. We asked the responders to score each indicator from 1 to 5 (1 for completely unsustainable and 5 for completely sustainable). The questionnaires were filled by face to face interview and 100 questionnaires have been filled by residence in Golestan town. The results of evaluation land development plan of Golestan town in social and physical aspects show that environmental and physical aspects are more considered and social aspects are ignored. Not enough attention to social aspects makes Medium sustainability (between sustainability and no sustainability) in social aspect, while in environmental – physical aspect, more attention has happened and Golestan town has a semi sustainable (good sustainability) situation. The following table illustrates the sustainability level of each criterion. As it could be seen while public participation has the lowest level of sustainability, some social criteria such as comfort ability and peace, social justice, diversity of social groups and some physical criteria like quality and facility of accesses, quality of environment and energy consumption has a good situation from sustainable aspects. In summary, it is obvious that in land development plans physical aspects are more considered than social aspects. I could be said that based on urban manager views, urban development is limited to urban construction and social development has no role in urban development plans. In addition, based on the findings, people who live in Golestan town come from vast socio-economical groups which mean they would have different type of demands and it is necessary of development plans to response to this variety. Moreover, in this kind of development, land delivery is in a large scale and common price, and there is not any development around the delivered land, which means some needs of the future residence would be ignored.

Keywords


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