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’ ...
Read More
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 Architecture
aliakbar heidari; malihe taghipour
Abstract
Highlights
- The physical health of people in residential complexes is directly related to the environmental quality of those complexes;
- The mental health of the residents in the residential complexes is directly related to the structural quality of the complexes;
- The social health of the residents ...
Read More
Highlights
- The physical health of people in residential complexes is directly related to the environmental quality of those complexes;
- The mental health of the residents in the residential complexes is directly related to the structural quality of the complexes;
- The social health of the residents in the residential complexes is directly related to the functional quality of the complexes;
- Providing health dimensions in residential complexes is directly related to the quality of life of residents.
Introduction
Due to the inattention of designers and architectures to the quality of biological collections during the rapid growth of urbanization, the residents of these collections have faced many problems, the most important being the sharp decline in their quality of life. On the other hand, since home is the most important space in human life, and people spend most of their lives in residential environments, the quality of housing and its role in improvement of the quality of life is a significant issue. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate how the environmental quality of housing is related to the residents’ quality of life to analyze the mechanism of this relationship. Accordingly, the environmental quality of housing was considered as an independent variable and the quality of life as a dependent variable. In addition, given that the quality of housing is an objective issue, and the quality of life is a subjective issue, a mediating variable was needed with both objective and subjective aspects for analysis of the relationship between the two concepts. Therefore, the notion of health was considered as the mediating variable in this study, and an attempt was made to explain the relationship between the main variables through examination of the relationship between health and the dimensions of environmental quality, on the one hand, and its relationship with the quality of life, on the other.
Theoretical Framework
Based on the objectives and hypotheses of the research, architectural quality was considered as an independent variable, quality of life as a dependent variable, and health dimensions as a mediating variable. According to the research literature, the quality of architecture was evaluated in the form of three indicators: environmental quality, structural quality, and functional quality. The quality of life was evaluated in the form of a psychological-semantic concept including satisfaction with residents’ various aspects of individual and social life. Finally, the dimensions of health were analyzed in the form of three aspects: physical, mental, and social health.
Methodology
After a review of the literature and extraction of the indicators concerning each of the research variables, the theoretical framework of the research was presented. These indicators were examined as a case study using tools including observation, interview, and researcher-made questionnaires at three residential complexes in the city of Shiraz, Iran. A standard questionnaire was used to assess the quality of life. The quality of architecture was assessed using the above tools based on the indicators provided for that purpose. Finally, the residents’ health conditions were assessed using a researcher-made closed questionnaire. To specify the validity and reliability of the questionnaires, the items concerning each variable were first designed and provided to the experts. After a number of the items were corrected and deleted, the final questionnaire was designed in the form of a set of 26 items, and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for each group was obtained.
Results and Discussion
The eventual research results follow.
- The physical health of the people in the residential complexes was directly related to the environmental quality of the complexes.
- The mental health of the residents of the residential complexes was directly related to the structural quality of the complexes.
- The social health of the residents of the residential complexes was directly related to the functional quality of the complexes.
- Provision of health dimensions in the residential complexes was directly related to the residents’ quality of life.
Conclusion
1- The quality of architecture in residential spaces is directly related to improvement of the residents’ health conditions. In this regard, the following are significant:
-Improvement of the level of environmental quality promotes all aspects of health in housing, especially the residents’ physical health. This means that the most important factors ensuring the residents’ physical health include the provision of health, creation of environmental comfort in housing, and assurance of the residents’ safety, which lie in the field of environmental quality.
- Improvement of the level of structural quality in housing promotes mental health. Psychological peace is provided in the house through attention to the structural features of housing with respect to the method of spatial configuration, proper spatial zoning, provision of the residents with psychological security, creation of an appropriate visual space in the home environment, and the like. As a result, the residents’ mental health is improved at home.
- Improvement of the level of functional quality improves the residents’ social health in residential environments. We can refer to the capabilities of housing in provision of individual and social functions in the housing environment. are These capabilities include the establishment of collective spaces in the residential environment, creation of a space with functional diversity to perform a variety of activities in public spaces, generation of a spatial hierarchy, and individual and social privacy in space. Such solutions raise the possibility of increasing the interaction between neighbors, which leads to greater recognition among them, formation of the residents’ collective identity, and increase in the desire for social participation among them, which can ultimately contribute to social health.
2- The residents’ quality of health in residential complexes is directly related to the improvement of their quality of life.
This means that provision of all the three dimensions of health in residential environments increases the residents’ quality of life from all aspects. Therefore, if any of the dimensions of health is not provided in a residential environment, it can reduce the residents’ quality of life.
3- The quality of architecture in a residential space is directly related to the residents’ quality of life.
This issue, which is one of the main purposes of the present study, is quite obvious and understandable in light of the above. Thus, on the one hand, there is a two-way relationship between the quality of architecture and health dimensions; on the other hand, the residents’ quality of health in a residential complex is directly related to their quality of life there. Therefore, it can be stated that there is a direct relationship between the quality of architecture in a residential complex and the residents’ quality of life. Hence, improvement of the quality of architecture in a residential space increases different dimensions of the residents’ health, leading to an improvement in their quality of life.
