Analysis of Urban Quality of Life Classification withSimple Additive-Weighting Method(SAW)

Researches on quality of life in urban environments have gained considerable attention by the urban scientists. These studies have specific approach in different dimensions. For example, they may cover different geographical regions and the specific aspects of quality of life such as housing, income, safety issues and etc. Quality of life has a comprehensive meaning which ranges from good, satisfied to happy life. Foo defined quality of life as follow "quality of life examines two sets of objective and subjective indexes in many cases". Subjective indexes extract from measuring the perceptions, attitudes and satisfaction of people regarding to their urban environment, while objective indexes would obtain via visible realities which are available in the form of secondary data. Given the level of quality of life in the study both indexes could be used for showing the level of urban quality of life. The methodology of the research is based on descriptive-analytical a method which is associated by conducting a field work to complete the questioners in the city of Babolsar. Entropy and SAW technique were applied to rank the quality of life in the sixteen neighborhoods of the city. The number of objective and subjective indexes included 20 which a part of study concentrated on the subjective aspect, so to measure the view of citizens 320 questionnaires were distributed in the sixteen neighborhoods of the city i.e. 20 for each neighborhood. Cochran equation was used to to determine the number of samples from the statistical society of Babolsar with 50032 populations as follow. Theoretical There have been many approaches regarding to the quality of urban residential environment such as Policy Maker's Perspective,Cognitive-Psychological Perspective, Semi-Empirical Approaches and Empirical Research Perspective.Study area: Babolsar with an area of 1350 hectare is located in the southern part of Caspian Sea in the delta of Babolrood river in the 52o 39' 30" E and 36o 43' N. The general gradient of the town is from South to the North (less than 0.5 and 5 in a thousand). The economy of the city is based on tourism and cultural function as the only state owned university has located here The margin neighborhoods like 14, 13, 16, 7, 1 and 8 ranked in low quality of life. These areas are the poor regions of the city where the economic poverty leads to other aspects of urban life. The neighborhoods of 5, 6, 4, 3, 11, 10 and 15 illustrated a high level of quality of life where the price of land and housing is higher than other parts of the city due to its proximity to sea and the river. Today accessibility to clean water, electricity, efficient public transportation, and others with a healthy environment is the priorities of most of the urban residents, which determine the level of people satisfaction and their quality of life. Mercer Institute reports that an ideal or healthy city has to have a sewage system, appropriate waste disposal, recycling apart from optimum environment, good climate and a low level of natural hazards. With respect to the results from the model application in the different neighborhoods of Babolsar, the quality of life revealed a hierarchical order in different aspects of indexes. The peripheral neighborhoods placed in a lower level of development. Also monthly income showed a higher weight among the all indexes.