Designing Integrated Urban Management Pattern for Metropolises, Case Study: Mashhad

Most of the time, partial decision making of the urban management organizations bring great problems in planning and scientific urban budgeting and districting which lead to inconsistency and spending extreme costs in urban management. Currently among a large number of Metropolises in Iran, Mashhad city, has critical issues about lack of coordination between municipal organizations which leads to an imbalance in urban management and municipal districting. In case of Mashhad, this issue was detected by the plan of “role and position of midterm comprehensive plans in metropolises development” done by urban experts. In this plan, imbalance statues and relations of municipal organizations was shown as a major problem that Mashhad faced with. Also as a suggestion, moving towards integrated urban management as a process presented in this comprehensive study for case of Mashhad. Theoretical review of this article for the solution of this problem shows the existence of effective methods for transition from island like decision making structure, fragmented planning and divisions to the integrated urban management. The aim of the present research is designing an optimization pattern which is effective on codifying integrated urban management sample in metropolises. This purpose was achieved by three models in quality and quantity based named Delphi, VIKOR and SWOT through a descriptive- analytical study. The research approach contains several steps. First referring to fieldwork and theoretical resources and references, urban management and its criteria in municipal organization approach and their budgeting systems were studied through a case study. At the second step, after those criteria were collected with Delphi technique, priorities got ready to rank. These criteria represent suitable and balanced urban districting and in a larger scale represent an integrated urban management system we should have. Priorities for playing role in an integrated urban management pattern were achieved using VIKOR model. In details, we created Delphi group including two groups: scientific professors and empirical experts of urban management credits. These groups contained 18 members and their role led to extract five criteria named X1 to X5. X1 is “The effectiveness rate of urban management”, X2 is “type of function”, X3 is “number of districts”, X4 is “criterion of districting” and X5 is “average cost of imbalance conditions available in urban management for each one of citizens”. Then, we used VIKOR method in seven steps. First, Delphi group started to weight municipal organizations in related with the five criteria and the average of them were calculated as decision making matrix contain of rows that represent municipal organization and columns that represent criteria (X1 to X5). At the second step, the created matrix of decisions was normalized. After that, in the third step weighting of criteria was started with Entropy method. In the fourth step, normalized matrix was multiplied by the weight of every criterion in prioritization process and the answer was named normal weight matrix. In the fifth step, maximum value was named “fi+” and minimum value was named “fi-” which was extracted in decision matrix. After that, in the sixth step, we could calculate desirability index named “Sj” and discomfort index named “Rj”. For this purpose, weight values from Entropy were multiplied by the decision matrix values. In the seventh step, VIKOR index that represent final score for each option was calculated. If VIKOR index is low for an option, it will have a higher priority toward others. Moreover, determining priorities of the municipal organizations was not good enough for establishment of an integrated urban management. So in the third part of the research, in order to offer practical suggestions, we used SWOT method. We used this for recognition and analysis strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities and threats available in districting system and urban management of Mashhad city and also for municipal organizations. Then according to current statement of the city, and its criteria representing urban management, districting and budgeting system, we presented three scenario for short term, midterm and long term related in three approach of comprehensive, middle and small scale that could achieve integrated urban management and balanced districting. The results shows that for practice of integrated urban management, some of organizations such as “gas organization”, “electronic”, “water and wastewater”, “post”, “telecommunications” and “police office” take priority and some of them such as “Imam Khomeini Relief foundation”, “health and medical organization” and “Registration of deed and birth” in regard to divisional criterion, can coordinate their divisions easily with municipality. “Fire-fighting”, “bus services”, “educations”, “social security” and “justice” organizations with regard to the type of activity and divisional criterion, have less inflection to coordinate with municipality. According to the investigation of the existing districting and current performance of the urban management trustee organizations in Mashhad, for reaching to the integrated urban management and balanced districting, research sample is submitted in three stages of short term, middle term and long term Scenarios.