Safar Ghaedrahmati; Seyed Ali Alavi; Shaharm Bazrafkan
Abstract
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
The realization of good urban governance in urban management of metropolitans in Iran, including Tehran, requires the realization of citizens’ participation in a variety of dimensions. This emphasizes on the concepts such as justice-orientation, legality, transparency, ...
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Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
The realization of good urban governance in urban management of metropolitans in Iran, including Tehran, requires the realization of citizens’ participation in a variety of dimensions. This emphasizes on the concepts such as justice-orientation, legality, transparency, consensus-orientation, participation, efficiency and effectiveness, accountability and responsibility. Due to the fact that the management of the district 9 like other urban districts of Tehran is at a low level, it seems that this district requires a new and more dynamic management system to be improved.
In this research, the neighborhoods of the 9th district of Tehran have been considered in terms of important indicators of urban good governance. Using the VIKOR ranking technique, we have studied the position of these indicators. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to evaluate the eight neighborhoods of district 9 and prioritize neighborhoods based on urban good governance indicators. For this purpose, firstly, using the available literature on urban governance, various dimensions of the subject are described with emphasis on urban neighborhoods, and then, on this basis, appropriate indicators for measuring urban good governance are extracted. In the following, a suitable tool for gathering proportionate data with the indicators has been designed. As the field study has been carried out, the resulted data are analyzed using VIKOR model.
2. Methodology
The general approach of the research is a quantitative method. It is based on documentation and field study (questionnaire) in terms of data gathering. First, related studies are used to identify urban good governance indicators. Accordingly, eight important indicators were identified in this field and considered for designing the questionnaire as the main tool of research in the field study.
To increase the validity, the content and visual validity methods have been used. In this regard, the validity of the research tool was confirmed by a number of experts in this field. Then, Cronbach's alpha technique was used to measure the reliability of research tool. The number of 0.835 was obtained, which indicates the appropriate reliability of the research tool. According to Cochran's formula, 384 questionnaires in eight neighborhoods of 9th district of Tehran were distributed by stratified random sampling. Finally, the VIKOR decision model was used to analyze the collected data derived from field surveys.
3. Results and Discussion
This research aims to measure urban good governance indicators in Tehran's neighborhoods. In this regard, based on the available survey literature in the field of urban good governance, 39 items in the form of eight indicators of urban good governance including participation, justice-oriented, consensus-oriented, efficiency and effectiveness, transparency, legality, accountability and responsibility have been examined in an analysis framework of VIKOR model.
The results show that the neighborhoods of the 9th district of Tehran have a different situation in terms of urban good governance indicators. As Table 12 shows, these indicators have generally a better status in Dr Hooshyar and Ostad Moein with the coefficients of 0.093 and 0.252, respectively. Fatah neighborhood is in the worst status with the coefficient of 0.810. This indicates a significant difference between the neighborhoods in terms of urban good governance. And the rest of other neighborhoods of 9th district of Tehran have a coefficient between 0.3 and 0.7.
4. Conclusion
According to the findings, the centralized and top-down management of authorities and urban managers in the studied neighborhoods, vertical relations and hierarchy, lack of attention to local and civil institutions, discrimination in laws and regulations, and finally, lack of attention to the strategy of community development as the basis and participatory development foundation are remarkable in these neighborhoods. The goal of participatory development foundation is to pay attention to a citizen as a responsible and active member in the urban society to encourage collaboration for promoting standards of the life.
The strategy of urban good governance aims to create a democratic process for flourishing a foundation for social life based on more participation of people, collective responsibility and the delegation of authority to the local community in order to improve the quality of life. In addition, focusing on the ability of the local community and their direct role in the development process, this strategy seeks to find a type of management based on the local community through collaboration of government and nongovernmental organizations, while unfortunately, these indicators are not considered comprehensively in the studied neighborhoods, and “the right of human development and places” has been ignored.
Also, the indicator of accountability was lower than the average, indicating that the respondents did not consider this indicator in desirable status in their district. They believe that the authorities and urban (district) managers should be responsible and accountable to their results, decisions and activities and should be responsive about their decisions to the urban (district) residents. They did not consider their authorities responsive to accomplished or accomplishing activities. This status is not observed in studied neighborhoods.
Safar Ghaed Rahmati; Hasan Behnam Morshedi
Abstract
Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth of population in big cities of Iran and the need for leading this overflow of population and future economic activities from big cities to new towns have necessitated constructing them. Therefore, due to the economic, social and structural issues of ...
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Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth of population in big cities of Iran and the need for leading this overflow of population and future economic activities from big cities to new towns have necessitated constructing them. Therefore, due to the economic, social and structural issues of Iran's cities, the solution for making new towns has been proposed. The plan of constructing new towns was suggested by the welfare committee of government's employees in the ministry of roads and Urban Development. There are some issues in relation to establishing new towns and how to plan and manage them. Not only new towns have not resolved the urban problems but also some problems have emerged in the process of urbanization in Iran and new towns have brought about management gaps. In this regard, the political management ability of a community is one of the most important factors in the planning, designing, implementing and managing a new town. The management ability of a country is greater; the possibility of creating administrative, economic, political and social institutions in a city is more possible. As a result, more people have the opportunity to live in a city with satisfaction. These factors provide more population concentration in an area and on the other hand, present more services to the dwellers. Therefore, the relationship and interaction between social organization and spatial organization is an important research issue in geography and urban planning. New towns can be considered as the most prominent examples of social, political and spatial complexities; because it plays important role in the structure of political, social and economic relations in societies.
Thus, this research is going to answer these questions:
• How is the political management of new towns evaluated in the current situation?
• What is the pattern of the structure of urban governance in new towns of metropolitan cities?
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The political management of a town is the exact representation of local government and urban system that facilitate the spatial distribution in the towns and attempt to conceive the inside and outside of urban space and as a consequence the welfare and prosperity of people are provided in their life. The existing structure of management of new towns and their duties is the product of years of focusing on the system of government and bureaucracy. This structure of management does not possess enough ability to meet the increasing demands caused by the rapid growth of urbanization and outbreak of new changes in the social, structural and economic structure of new towns. Consequently, to solve this problem, in Article 12 of the Law of creating new towns, the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development shall ensure to announce the settlement of at least ten thousand people in a new town to the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior is obliged to establish city council and municipality in that new town, even if the plan of the new town is not finished yet. Not only by establishing the Municipality, the problem is not resolved, but also the management of these towns follows a dual model that has negative impacts on the function of new towns. The management of new towns is based on the management model of political spaces (The Ministry of Interior and State Governments) and the other one is the model of New Towns Development Company.
3- METHODOLOGY
The present study, in terms of purpose is an applied research and in terms of analysis method is a descriptive and analytical one. In this study thirty elite people were chosen by random sampling. The twenty-eight research indicators were selected based on the literature of research and the experiences of studies and also according to the purpose of the researches on political management in new towns. The K-S test was used to prove the normality of the variables. After defining the items and their normality test, all the items were ranked and specified based on the Likert score.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The findings indicate that the importance of "Justice" indicator in the model of political management of new towns has been evaluated by 37.5 percent as Very Much, 31.2 percent as Much, and the other 31.2 percent evaluated it as Average. These evaluations demonstrate the high importance of Justice in the model of political management of new towns. Therefore, in terms of importance, the priority of indicators in the model of political management is respectively: contribution, enhancing the administrative capacity, empowering the local citizens, justice, and collective identity formation.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
According to a legal definition of duties of these management models of new cities, there are some similar functions that cause conflict and disagreement in managing the new towns. When these management models reach to an agreement in their functions, the town will develop. But the conflicts between them prevent them from focused decision makings. This gaps in the decision-making centers will have a direct impact on the functions.
Thus, these Institutions along with other serving institutions have considered some divisions based on sector plans and job descriptions, and technical and administrative problems. Now the most important problem caused by this multiplexing division is imbalance in the provision of services and lack of coordination. These factors show the increasing necessity of management.
To overcome the challenges of the new towns some strategies are suggested as fellow:
• First step: to define a long-term development perspective
• Second step: to prepare an economic framework for sustainable development to reduce the risk of fragile economic structures in the new towns
• Third step: to prepare a comprehensive plan of public services to coordinate public services to local needs.
Strategic recommendations in the field of urban management are presented as these four strategies: establishing effective and developing governance structure in the field of urban management, creating coordination and interaction between institutions and organizations involved in urban management of the new cities, strengthening cooperation and coordination between inter sectorial and inter organizational, leading the objectives and organizational structure towards the developing.
