Urban Management
Behrouz Mohamadrezapour; Alireza Jamshidi
Abstract
In recent decades, cities have encountered increasing challenges, including the erosion of urban identity, declining competitiveness, and difficulties in achieving sustainable development. In this context, urban branding has emerged as a strategic approach for redefining a city's position at both ...
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In recent decades, cities have encountered increasing challenges, including the erosion of urban identity, declining competitiveness, and difficulties in achieving sustainable development. In this context, urban branding has emerged as a strategic approach for redefining a city's position at both national and international levels. At the same time, technological innovation and urban entrepreneurship have become key drivers of urban transformation by enhancing quality of life and strengthening the city’s image. Moreover, contemporary outdoor advertising supported by digital technologies and creative interactive designs provides an effective platform for fostering meaningful engagement between citizens and the urban brand. Despite these opportunities, the relationship between entrepreneurship, outdoor advertising, and sustainable urban branding has rarely been examined within a comprehensive strategic framework. Therefore, this study aims to identify critical success factors and develop strategies for enhancing the role of entrepreneurship in outdoor advertising design to achieve the sustainable revitalization of urban brands.
The study is applied-developmental in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology, drawing on a literature review, expert judgment, and quantitative analysis. First, factors and indicators related to urban entrepreneurship, outdoor advertising, and city branding were extracted and initially organized through a review and analysis of relevant studies and scholarly sources. Subsequently, the extracted factors and indicators were purposively reviewed and refined based on the opinions of 15 academic experts, outdoor advertising specialists, and urban managers. In the quantitative stage, the finalized indicators were assessed using a researcher-developed questionnaire based on a five-point Likert scale, and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS and the Meta-SWOT model. The face and content validity of the questionnaire were confirmed through expert judgment, and its reliability was found to be satisfactory, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.92. The findings revealed that, based on the Meta-SWOT analysis, the five most important factors were entrepreneurial innovation in urban spaces (Mean = 4.67), enhancement of the city’s image (Mean = 4.62), the use of emerging technologies (Mean = 4.61), digital and smart outdoor advertising (Mean = 4.59), and alignment of the city brand with sustainable development (Mean = 4.58). In addition, factors such as limited citizen participation, insufficient regulatory transparency, and environmental constraints were identified as major barriers. The results indicate that the success of strategies for revitalizing the city brand requires alignment among entrepreneurial capacities, urban governance, social capital, and innovative outdoor advertising. Furthermore, aligning the city’s internal resources with external environmental opportunities plays a decisive role in achieving sustainable city branding.
Urban Management
davood Jamini; Ali shamsoddini; Alireza Jamshidi
Abstract
Highlights- Participation of citizens in various urban affairs brings many benefits such as enhancement of social capital, satisfaction, and improvement of the civil society.- A condition for achievement of sustainable development in today’s cities is the participation of citizens in its various ...
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Highlights- Participation of citizens in various urban affairs brings many benefits such as enhancement of social capital, satisfaction, and improvement of the civil society.- A condition for achievement of sustainable development in today’s cities is the participation of citizens in its various affairs.- The constituent components of citizens’ participation include mental-spiritual participation, participation in provision of human resources, political participation, and financial participation.- A low level of participation of citizens in urban management can be attributed to various factors, including the weakness of city managers and the rules and regulations concerning their selection, citizens’ lack of concern, etc. IntroductionCitizens’ participation in various matters of urban spaces is one of the most important issues in achievement of sustainable urban development, an acceptable level of which is one of the most significant concerns of policy makers and urban planners. For achievement of sustainable development in Ilam, a border city in Iran, it is of particular importance to investigate the status of citizen participation in urban management and identify the factors affecting the level thereof, which makes up the main purpose of this study.Theoretical FrameworkLiving in a democratic society requires people to play an active role in various aspects of their lives (Predescu & Darjan, 2010: 3241). Citizen participation is of great importance in systems claiming democracy (Ginieniewicz, 2007: 328) and is vital for any democratic society, and democracy can be developed only through involved, informed citizens. In addition, it is important to have citizens ready to take responsibility for changing the reality of today’s world (Manganelli et al., 2012: 1476). For this reason, public participation is seen today as a new strategy in development (Khajeh Shahkoohi et al., 2015: 4). An inductive look at the existing patterns of participation in the world indicates that they can be classified according to three different criteria: the type of participation (1- decision-making, 2- financing, and 3- manpower), the field of participation in activities (1- construction, 2- environment, 3- ensuring city safety, 4- monitoring, 5- municipal services, and 6- social welfare), and the type of organization (1- spontaneous, self-motivated organizations and 2- formal, motivated organizations). Of course, it is also possible to classify participation patterns based on the activity to perform which the participation is made (Rezaei and Asyabani, 2018: 146).In a general conclusion, it can be stated that citizen participation in urban management involves different aspects and a particular position in the issue of sustainable urban development. However, different factors affect the level of citizen participation in urban management, which can vary by urban space.MethodologyThis is a descriptive-correlational applied quantitative study using the analysis of covariance-variance among correlation methods. The research area is Ilam, and the research population includes 194030 citizens of the city who are over 18 years old. 383 citizens were selected based on Cochran’s formula using stratified random sampling. In addition to documentary studies, the main research tool for data collection was a researcher-made questionnaire. It should be noted that the design of the questionnaire used to measure citizen participation in urban management was based on the works by Amirahmadi et al. (2016) and Meymandi Parizi (2017). The validity of the research tool was evaluated and confirmed through consultation of experts and university teachers (face validity) and also using convergence. Combined reliability coefficients (greater than 0.7) and Cronbach’s alpha (greater than 0.7) were used to measure reliability. The two methods of descriptive statistics (frequency, frequency percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (correlation analysis and structural equation modeling) were used to analyze the data. It should be noted that one statistical method used in the field of structural equation modeling is partial least squares, calling for the use of relevant software such as SPSS and SmartPLS to analyze the data.Results and DiscussionThe results of the structural model analysis demonstrated that the variable of satisfaction with the performance of urban managers exhibited a significant effect on other independent variables. Thus, it had the greatest impact on the variables of proper urban governance (with an impact factor of 0.275), job satisfaction (with an impact factor of 0.262), and social capital (with an impact factor of 0.255). On the other hand, the variable of satisfaction with the performance of urban managers exhibited the slightest effect (with an impact factor of 0.05) on the level of citizen participation in urban management, where we can point out the low level of citizen satisfaction with the performance of urban managers (2.37 on average).ConclusionThe results demonstrated that there were significant relationships between citizen participation in urban management in the study area (the dependent variable of the research) and job satisfaction, satisfaction with the performance of urban managers, social capital, proper urban governance, quality of life (negative correlation), and sense of belonging to the place. Thus, it can be stated that the level of citizen participation decreases and increases as the level of each of these variables is decreased and increased. The results obtained from the structural analysis model (with the partial least squares method) indicated that the independent research variables were capable of explaining 75.8% of the variance in Ilam citizens’ participation in urban management. The values of the coefficients for the impacts of each of those variables on the dependent variable include 0.35 (quality of life), 0.05 (satisfaction with the performance of urban managers), -0.075 (social capital), 0.131 (job satisfaction), 0.372 (proper urban governance), and 0.275 (spatial affiliation).
Slum Settlements
H. Gh.; A. J.; M. J.; D. J.
Volume 2, Issue 6 , June 2013, , Pages 43-58
