Urban Planning
fahimeh Namvar Haghighi Shirazi Fard; khalil Hajipour; Amir Hosein Shabani; mahmoud mohammadi
Abstract
Highlights
The existence of intermediary institutions between the local government and the people is a strategic factor in reconstruction of distressed areas.
In the implementation of land readjustment, legal regulations and definition of the executive framework play a key role.
Landowners’ ...
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Highlights
The existence of intermediary institutions between the local government and the people is a strategic factor in reconstruction of distressed areas.
In the implementation of land readjustment, legal regulations and definition of the executive framework play a key role.
Landowners’ desire to participate is the most important factor in the implementation of land readjustment in distressed areas.
Introduction
In recent decades, the increasing growth of cities has transformed agricultural lands and increased the costs of urban services, leading to urban expansion. Moreover, the cities are faced with problems such as the deterioration of urban neighborhoods and suburbs due to people’s lack of willingness to live in these neighborhoods, decline in investment in old neighborhoods, reduction of capacity, and decline in the quality of life. With 1,700 hectares of distressed areas, the city of Shiraz, Iran is no exception, and suffers the same problem. It is possible to solve such issues through urban growth management policies. One of these policies is Land Readjustment (LR). It is necessary to identify and classify the legal, institutional, economic, social, and local factors influencing land readjustment in order to provide effective, sufficient urban generation. Thus, this study aimed to identify the key factors influencing the land readjustment process in distressed areas and to examine the cause-and-effect relations through Interpretative Structural Model in order to identify the most important variables in the implementation process. This could be a guide for urban management to achieve infill development by stimulating and implementing the most important variables and, consequently, increasing the possibility of the entire land readjustment project.
Theoretical Framework
Land readjustment is a technique used for management of urban development, according to which a number of irregular plots of land are divided into more regular plots after consolidation with proper planning, and sections including ones used for provision of public services are also divided between the original owners for construction purposes. In this method, the lines of ownership are changed for consolidation, division, and replacement of land areas for the purpose of creation or improvement of urban facilities and public services. Rather than forced to provide the required land, the owners are invited to negotiations for consolidation of their lands to provide land for services.
Methodology
The present research could be categorized as an applied descriptive-analytical study. Due to the complexity of the relationships, the MicMac software was used to analyze the driving and dependent forces. In this method, the factors are placed in an n * n matrix and filled with numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3 based on expert opinions, and are considered as the basis for further analysis. For this purpose, indicators were extracted from the theoretical framework of the research as a 22 * 22 matrix and provided to seventeen urban experts in Shiraz as a two-stage Delphi questionnaire.
Results and Discussion
In the case of unwillingness to participate, two variables were considered as increasing system risk: definition of the laws concerning the residents and owners’ protests pertaining to the urban design before, during, and after its implementation and enactment of the laws concerning the payment of the probable indemnity to the residents. This was because any legislation could be an obstacle in the system, decreasing the owners’ and residents’ partnership tendency, without fair consideration of their interests.
The major organizational-institutional variables played an important role in the implementation of land readjustment, and influenced the other variables. These included partnership of the local government through intermediary and facilitating institutions, law-abiding local governments, and concern for individual and social justice. This is because these variables actually link the social variables to the executable ones, and function as an interface to provide a framework for correct implementation to meet people’s needs.
Furthermore, partnership of the local government through intermediary and facilitating institutions is one of the most effective, most impressive variables, which plays a key, strategic role.
Conclusion
The findings reveal that the key to implementation of land readjustment in distressed areas and to solve their problems is to create an intermediary institution to listen to the people’s demands and opinions. Other strategic variables involved in land readjustment in distressed areas include concern for individual and social justice in the local government, strategic perspective and flexibility of the local government, definition of the tangible, approachable objectives, and appropriate assessment of land price before and after the execution.
Therefore, it is necessary to constantly examine the variables during both design and implementation of land readjustment in a distressed area. All these variables are either directly related to or applied by the local government, indicating the importance of city authorities’ policy-making and employment of experienced workforce.
It is also important for the basic requirements according to the existing facts to select appropriate sites and set tangible goals, because the process would stop as a result of a lack of concern for the facts.
Urban Management
Andishe Ariana; Gholamreza Kazemian; Mahmoud Mohammadi
Abstract
Conflicts between urban regeneration stakeholders prevent full utilization of their participation capacities in areas with urban decline, and plans have not been fully realized as a result of conflicts since participation is a key element in urban regeneration. The main purpose of this study was to present ...
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Conflicts between urban regeneration stakeholders prevent full utilization of their participation capacities in areas with urban decline, and plans have not been fully realized as a result of conflicts since participation is a key element in urban regeneration. The main purpose of this study was to present the conflict management model of urban regeneration stakeholders in Iran based on institutional theory and collaborative governance. In a case study, the Hemmat-abad neighborhood in the city of Isfahan, Iran was considered according to the history of several measures taken and plans proposed for renovation and improvement of the distressed areas and the failure of the projects so far. Stakeholder conflict management can balance disagreements and conflicts between stakeholders of urban regeneration and lead to interaction, partnership, and collaboration among them, providing creativity and effectiveness and improving the implementation processes of urban regeneration projects. This article aimed to present a model for conflict management of urban regeneration stakeholders in Iran based on institutional theory and collaborative governance using the method of qualitative content analysis for the Hemmat-abad neighborhood. The components of the proposed conceptual model were presented through an investigation of the foundations of institutional theory and basic concepts including urban regeneration, stakeholder conflict management, and collaborative governance. Then, the proposed model was tested and analyzed for the Hemmat-abad neighborhood using the method of qualitative content analysis. For this purpose, the transcripts of the interviews made with the key stakeholders and the documents on reconstruction of the neighborhood were used after identification of the key stakeholders and their main conflicts. Finally, the conflict management model of urban regeneration stakeholders in regard to Hemmat-abad was derived. For presentation of the proposed model, the main stakeholders were classified using the power-interest matrix. After the identification of the key stakeholders, the types of conflict (cognitive conflicts, conflicts of objectives or interests, normative conflicts, and conflicts of relationships) between them were specified, along with the status of each in the intervention management process for regeneration of the Hemmat-abad neighborhood, to suit different conflict management styles (competition, collaboration, compromise, and avoidance). According to this model for Hemmat-abad, identified conflicts in accordance with the collaborative style held the highest priority to enter the proposed management model due to the lack of experience in the competition management strategy. A collaboration cycle could thus be established at the prescribed stage. In this model, three collaborative processes were used, including involvement and principled participation, capacity for joint action, and shared motivation using conflict resolution techniques, face-to-face dialogue in particular. In this case, dialogue was utilized as negotiation in order to establish the four components of trust-building, legitimacy, understanding, and common commitment with respect to the subject of conflict, leading to consensus between the conflicting parties. Thus, decision-making for achievement of a win-win situation means to meet the demands and expectations of both parties of the conflict. With effective conflict management between stakeholders, the proposed model was found to play an effective role in capacity-building and enhancement of the efficiency of the Hemmat-abad neighborhood renovation plan.
Urban Planning
zeynab aliabadi; mahmoud mohammdi
Abstract
This research was conducted to investigate the effects of the parameters pertaining to the spatial structure of passages on imperviousness in passages less than six meters wide, which has led to distressed areas in the city of Zanjan, Iran. The research questions inquired what factors in the spatial ...
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This research was conducted to investigate the effects of the parameters pertaining to the spatial structure of passages on imperviousness in passages less than six meters wide, which has led to distressed areas in the city of Zanjan, Iran. The research questions inquired what factors in the spatial structure of the passage network affected the distress caused by imperviousness and how they could be examined. The above questions were addressed using a statistical method known as the logistic regression test, specifying the presence or absence of a relationship between imperviousness and space syntax indices, such as global and local integration, connection, selection, and depth. The results demonstrated that some of the spatial structure index variables could be effective on the amount of distress. According to the Wald statistic results and the relevant sig. values, the variables global integration and selection did not have a significant effect on the amount of distress in passages less than six meters wide in the distressed areas of Zanjan, because the values in the B column were positive, and the corresponding sig. values were not significant at the error level of 0.05. This indicated that there was proper global relationship and integration between the passage network in distressed areas and those in the surrounding areas. In other words, distressed area neighborhoods were not poorer than those around them in terms of global integration, and an increase in global integration would not have a considerable effect on distress in passages less than six meters wide. On the other hand, connection and local integration, in that order, had significant effects on distress in Zanjan in the present conditions, because the values in the B column were negative, and the corresponding sig. values were statistically significant at the error level of 0.05. This demonstrated that distress could be reduced with an increase in connection in successive dead ends and in local integration in passages within neighborhoods in distressed areas in Zanjan. The overall results of the analysis showed that poor internal structure (poor connection or local integration) in distressed areas in Zanjan was the main factor increasing the amount of distress, and such a weakness in interconnection in neighborhoods with several dead ends had made them difficult to access. These hardly accessible points on passages less than six meters wide within neighborhoods could be spatially isolated over time, increasing distress. Given the poor local structure, therefore, it was suggested for reduction of distress in infected areas in Zanjan that connection and local integration should be increased.
