Social Isolation, Urban Development, and Socioeconomic Status in Tehran

In the early approaches regarding social isolation the focus has been mainly on the transformation in social relations caused by modernity, which increases the potential for isolation. With the formation of the Chicago school, Louise Wirth studies isolation as a style of urban living. With Park’s emphasis on the natural areas of cities, and then the neo-Marxist approaches to urban poverty, isolation is defined as a kind of deprivation related to the economic and spatial inequalities in cities. The present research has studied surveys collected from 400 citizens in districts 1 and 3 as developed regions, and in districts 17 and 19 as less developed regions. The findings show that the citizens are suffering from social isolation to a medium extent. This is while the objective dimension of social isolation is more than the medium. The testing of research hypotheses shows that there is a relationship between the level of development in a region and social isolation, so that the less developed a region, the more its inhabitants’ experience of social isolation. Especially, there is a distinct difference regarding the objective dimension of social isolation. Furthermore, there is a relationship between social isolation and the socioeconomic status of people, their age, social trust, and their sense of belonging to the neighborhood and the city