Developing the Ecological Sustainable Strategies to increase Urban Environmental Resilience: (Case Study: Districts 1 and 3 of Tehran Municipality)

Resilience thinking in urban environment has been recently proposed as an effective measure to realize the objectives of sustainable development, minimize uncertainties and non linear interactions. This concept, in the context of Modern urban ecology makes it possible to integrate natural and human factors and in urban systems and understanding the interactions between them, expanding sustainability approaches according to the known interactions. Using the conceptual model of new urban ecology that developed by Alberti and his colleagues in 2003, we can define and find the interactions between biophysical and human driving forces, structures, functions and impacts in urban environments, then based on this cognition, we can develop the suitable strategies (including Defensive, Offensive, Protective and opportunistic) and find the location of the measures in promoting urban resilience. In this research, Tehran has been selected as case study. With this respect, after defining key factors of urban environmental resilience maps of the factors which influence and are influenced by the satiability of urban environment were overlaid and 9 zones were identified. Based on the conceptual model of urban ecology, in order to understand the relationship between structure, function, impacts and responses, zone 2, which consisted of 1 and 3 of Tehran municipal districts, was selected as a sample. Considering the understanding from this zone in the model, different types of strategic orientations in spatial form were developed. Application of this approach in studies related to urban resilience can help planners to make proper decisions to maintain and improve existing and potential opportunities and ecosystem services in cities.