Urban Planning
Najma Esmailpoor; Zahra Heravi; Elham Heidari Hamane
Abstract
The growing trend in illegal construction of residential buildings is a problem that has impacted the urban planning and management system in Iran in the past few decades. Violation of urban planning and technical regulations is a fact that has existed long. Despite the penalties that have been considered ...
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The growing trend in illegal construction of residential buildings is a problem that has impacted the urban planning and management system in Iran in the past few decades. Violation of urban planning and technical regulations is a fact that has existed long. Despite the penalties that have been considered for infractions in construction, the phenomenon has been observed extensively in the city of Yazd, including the territory of Municipal District 3. For prevention of infractions in construction, it is necessary to study the nature and causes of the issue from different aspects. This is an applied survey with a descriptive, causal, and correlational methodology. The factor analysis technic was used for decreasing the large number of factors affecting the commitment of infractions in construction around cities. The research population was divided into two groups: a sample of size 161 of the municipality visitors over 20 years of age and all the expert officials of the municipality. The main purpose of the research was to organize, systematize, and regularize residential construction practices, and the operational objectives were to identify the major causes of infractions in the field of residential construction and to propose appropriate solutions for their reduction in the target municipality. The study involved an investigation of the relationship between the increase in the construction infractions committed by the citizens and three factors including the attitude of the municipality toward infractions as a source of revenue, inefficient monitoring of construction practices on the part of the municipality, and the bureaucracy dominant in the municipality issuing construction permits. Based on the findings from 12884 cases of infraction in construction committed within the territory under investigation between 1991 and 2016, 60% of the infractions concerned construction practices without permits, and 40% pertained to ones where the permit contents had been violated. The most frequent issued sentences involved demolition and penalization along with reconstruction in some cases. The following conclusions were made based on the obtained results. 1- Six major factors that account for about 60% of the tendency to commit infractions in residential construction practices within Municipal District 3 of Yazd include insufficient documentation, poor instruction plans, permit applicants’ incomplete knowledge of the construction regulations, bureaucracy, and violation of the decisions made by the municipality and poor monitoring. 2- The visitors’ opinion on the causes of infractions is not exactly the same as the experts’. 3- Being the committers of the infractions, the visitors regard the above items as the major causes, in that order. The experts, however, consider the following items: the high costs of obtaining construction permits and completion certificates, constructors’ unwillingness to obtain permits, long process of permit issuance, lack of correspondence between constructors’ authorities and responsibilities, low enforceability of the Article No. 100 Commission decisions, dependency of the municipal budget on the revenue from infractions, poor monitoring of construction practices, and limited sustainable financial resources for the municipality. 4- There is a relatively high correlation between the commitment of infractions in construction and the three factors of the attitude of the municipality toward infractions as a source of revenue, inefficient monitoring of residential construction practices on the part of the municipality, and the bureaucracy dominant in the municipality in the process of issuing construction permits. Therefore, it can help decrease infractions in construction within the territory of Municipal District 3 to enhance public awareness of urban construction regulations, lower the cost of issuing construction permits and simplify the procedure, provide sustainable sources of revenue, enhance the construction monitoring system of the municipality, and improve the relevant bureaucracy in the municipality.
