Designing a Model of Social Sustainability Place Indicators Using Delphi Method and Shannon Technique

Social life is one of the most important human needs which should be addressed in the context of urban life. As a science which is considering the organization of public environment of human life, municipal engineering should comprise the necessary measures to respond to these human needs. The concept of “social sustainability” has its foundation in human needs and in “sustainable development” framework while makes sustainable society as a proper perspective of a human society. From the beginning of conceptual framework of “sustainable development” which is propounded from the ending years of twentieth century, the social sustainability has been considered as one of its triplet aspects. Although the concept of “social sustainability” is propounded in social sciences, the achievement of this goal and, subsequently, a “sustainable society” requires an interdisciplinary movement. Moreover, considering promotion in social sustainability in the format of urban planning policies and strategies have been less considered in urban plans and programs. The issue that how the urban planning knowledge and profession can help promotion in social sustainability in the city and its concentration area which is urban public fields is essential and requires exploration and compilation of scientific responds. Meanwhile, in an environmental context, the environmental sciences, such as municipal engineering, play a significant role toward attainment a sustainable society. Regarding to this aim, codification of indicators in municipal engineering which influence on promotion of sustainable society, provides a framework for urban designers and planners. Since creating “urban place” is one of the most important concerns of urban designers and planners, and “place” is a special meaningful case of “space” which compounds with human norms and values, these indicators are noted in this research as “place indicators”. Therefore, the intended purpose of “place indicators of social sustainability” are qualitative indicators which, firstly, consider the conceptual context of “place”, and secondly, define the social sustainability and influence on its promotion in
urban spaces. The purpose of this paper is finding out a model of indicators to be served as a conceptual framework in urban designs and plans to promote social sustainability. To develop this model and achieve precise and refined indicators, the “Delphi Method” and “Shannon Technique” is used in this paper. Two main questions of this study are (1) which the effective place indicators are in promoting the social sustainability; and (2)   How we can develop a model of these indicators with Delphi Method. The Delphi method is a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. To answer to questions
by Delphi Method, the viewpoints of ten municipal engineers are gathered in two stages through interviewing and surveying. A semi-structured interview, in the first stage, was held. In this interview, at first, it is tried to deliberate the experts’ approaches in “social sustainability” and its relationship with municipal engineering, and then detect the most
effective factors in promoting the social sustainability in their viewpoint, and afterwards, share the results with them to cognize their opinion. In these interviews, the agreements of experts with local approach to social sustainability, and the difference with the global one, is also studied. After the first stage, and analyzing the interviews, the effective indicators
in promoting the social sustainability, or the so-called, “space codes” are extracted out of the viewpoint of these ten experts. Common codes are excluded by corresponding with the place codes extracted from the resources, and finally, 23 codes are determined as effective codes in social sustainability. These codes, then, in second stage of Delphi Technique,
are checked again by ten experts in form of close questionnaire with 5 Likert Scale. Hereafter, the data gathered from questionnaire is analyzed by Shannon Technique to carry the prioritization and weighting procedure. Being more precise regards to frequency of data. Findings show that the most important category of effective place indicators in promoting the social sustainability is “safety” which includes safety, security and privacy of urban areas. The second important one is “activatability” which includes diversification of activities, commixture of control, user confounding, accessibility, proper utilities, and local mosques and bazaars. Accordingly, “skeletal integrity” provides the lowest effect among the indicators. Experts believe that among the single indicators, “diversification of activities” and “accessibility” have the highest effect, and “identity” has the lowest effect on social sustainability. Finally, the place indicators model is developed and presented, while it influences on social sustainability promotion. This model includes 21 indicators in 5 major category: security, activatability, identity, people-orientation, and skeletal integrity. The weight and the order of indicators’ order in each category is presented.