The Integrated Deterioration Paradigm and the Integral Assessment of Urban Decay in Urban Distressed Areas (Case Study: 10th Municipal District, Mashhad, Iran)

It is now since some decades ago that the issue of physical decay and urban deteriorated fabrics reached the Iranian cities and has imposed itself as a serious urban problem. However it is deemed to be more significant and problematic issue due to the redefinition of physical decay within a triple criterion defining the urban deteriorated fabrics. The most important part of this definition is the division of physical fabric into three layers divided to hyperfine-grain, impermeability and structural instability of buildings. Although it could reveal some critical issues in the terms of physical setting of urban deterioration but it seems that a major part of the problem would remain apart. This article states the reality of deterioration as a vast concept containing interrelated factors which reveals a nature of integrity in the phenomenon of urban decay. As such the physical decay is only a sign of the distress which could be formally analyzed by the triple criteria. This article seeks to demonstrate the concept of integral deterioration and make an emphasis on this fact that the integral deterioration is something vaster and somehow unknown that if would not be considered as it is, a series of ignored factors would lead to a worse condition during a process of declination. In this study the related dimensions and indicators of integral deterioration have been extracted and then the most relevant indicators are weighted through an AHP process. This indicates the importance of each factor in the process of estimation of integral deterioration. Finally the official map of the deteriorated fabrics in the 10th Municipal District of Mashhad has been compared with a new map developed through the projection of weighted indicators in the GIS environment. The newly developed map would show the different aspects of deterioration in a framework of interdependent indicators and makes a holistic perspective towards the reality of deteriorated urban fabric. The result shows that a significant part of the deteriorated fabric has been ignored in the official map and the lack of an integrated approach is the main cause for this ignorance that makes the inefficiency of urban fabric remain misunderstood and therefor unsolved.