Application of Smart Growth in Designing Urban Deteriorated Areas from the Perspective of Experts and People, Case Study: Farahzad Community

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Urban Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran

2 M.A. in Urban Design, School of Architecture and Urban Design, Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Cities like living beings are always in need of revitalization. They are such as human organisms, need to renew their deteriorated areas and replace old cells with new ones. In process of renovating urban deteriorated areas in metropolitan of the world specially in capitals, not only new buildings are continuously replaced with urban deteriorated structure, but also the cultural, social and economic revitalizing as well as result of physical changes occur in city. On the other hand, the dispersed expansion of the city causes the adverse environmental, social and economic consequences. The dispersed expansion of the city causes the city to get empty from the inside, and with the uneven population deployment, the old city centers tend to wear out more quickly. In the meantime, rural context that have inevitably entered urban areas are also worn-out due to the inability to adapt to the speed of city growth. Because of the increasing amount of worn-out textures in Tehran and various social, economic, technical, legal, managerial and environmental aspects of these contexts, renovation has become one of the major issues in specialized circles, especially in urban design. Moreover, the natural hazards such as earthquakes, accelerate this process. Hence, considering that the revival of worn out textures is the main accelerating platform for improving the quality of life of its inhabitants and ultimately, reducing the city’s multifaceted distances, so an executive plan can be very valuable. Smart growth is suggested as a solution to these problems, which in addition to the restoration and rehabilitation of neighborhoods and inland areas, also control the growth and development of the city. Renovating urban deteriorated areas can improve quality of residents ‘life, reduce physical, social and economic distance of urban areas and eventually lead to achieve sustainable urban development, and this is the importance of renovating urban deteriorated areas. This study tries to use a comprehensive and new method in urban design and urban planning, considering the environmental, functional,social and economic dimensions in addition to  the physical aspects of the context, in renovating urban deteriorated areas. Main goal of this research is improving urban deteriorated areas by using of smart growth principles in renovation. To achieve this goal theoretical foundations of urban deteriorated areas and smart growth is studied and then the desired criteria and indicators are chosen. To select these components and their subindices, the Delphi technique was used and finally, all the measures examined by the field survey and based on its results, the design manuals and guidelines were developed. The findings of this paper show that the items such as “enhancing walkable accessibility”, “conservation of valuable buildings”, “enhancing legibility”, “attention to the economic conditions”, are the most important factors in renovating the Farahzad deteriorated community. By surveying residents, physical, functional and environmental problems were most prominent. Issues such as low passageways, lack of sidewalks in all areas, environmental pollution, fragmentation of parts, lack of efficient urban furniture, lack of adequate public spaces, lack of access to appropriate urban services, poor distribution of services are part of the problems which caused the main residents to leave the area and have no other affiliation to their neighborhood. According to the results of the survey, physical, economic, environmental, functional, social and perceptual components are respectively the most consistent with the quality of the environment, respectively. On the other hand, studies based on rational inference and field studies have also shown that the existing physical condition had a significant impact on decreasing the texture quality. The results also show that considering the components of “strengthening pedestrian access”, “protecting valuable historical boundaries”, “enhancing readability” and “paying attention to the livelihoods of residents” with the highest correlation coefficient will be effective in renovating deteriorated areas of the Farahzad based on principles Smart growth. Thus, some strategies including establishing integrity and coherence of the physical-spatial range, supporting the local economy and strengthening the required infrastructure, cleanliness and maintaining the gardens of the neighborhood, creation of integrity and integrity in the context and the general construction of the physicalspatial range, organizing and improving the condition of the buildings in the context, promoting the perceptual qualities of the arrival of the neighborhood and strengthening the signs along the way, compensation for the lack of localized service use to create lively neighborhoods, organizing public transportation and modification of sewage collection system and garbage collection system and also equipping and strengthening the range of recreational and service areas and increasing social relationships in the neighborhood, are recommended for using smart growth approach in planning new community of Farahzad.

Keywords


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