Measuring the livability of urban areas with an emphasis on the environmental dimension(case study of district 3 of Ardabil city)

Following the increase in the population of cities and the development of urban life, cities have always faced all kinds of physical, social, economic, and environmental problems. In today's era, solving these problems has become the most important challenge for urban planners. In this regard, planning with the approach of urban livability can create the necessary capacities to deal with these problems. The necessity and importance of addressing urban livability in relation to the new tasks of planning in responding to the needs of society after industrialization. The search for facilities and the quality of urban life has become extremely important today. Therefore, creating a livable city is a big and complex undertaking, and urban planners must support urban residents in terms of livability indicators.

The present research is descriptive-analytical in terms of method and practical in terms of purpose. To do it, first, exploratory studies were conducted in the form of a document library, and then, the major part of the research was a survey, which was done by completing a questionnaire. The statistical population of the research consists of the citizens of Region 3 of Ardabil city (100,504 people), of which 382 people were estimated as a sample based on Cochran's formula. Since the simple stratified random sampling method was used, 30 questionnaires were distributed and completed for each neighborhood and a total of 480. Calculating the reliability of the questions first with a pre-test, the questionnaire was implemented on a sample of 30 people, and then the reliability of the questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach's alpha method and the overall coefficient was 0.795, which shows the high level of reliability of the questionnaire. In order to determine the livability of the areas of Ardabil region 3 in terms of the environmental dimension, 4 indicators (visual quality, green space quality, pollution, cleaning and waste) and 30 items have been used. Finally, SAW multi-criteria decision making model was used for analysis and Shannon's entropy method was used to obtain the index weights.Multi-criteria decision making model:The multi-criteria decision model is one of the multi-criteria evaluation methods that has many applications in various fields. Decision-making is one of the most important tasks of management, and one of the reasons for the success of some people and organizations is making appropriate decisions; Therefore, the need for scientific methods that help people in this is quite "realistic". This has led researchers to pay attention to "multi-criteria models" for complex decision-making in recent decades.Decision-making models Multi-criteria (MCDM), sometimes called multi-objective decision models and multi-criteria analysis models, is actually a set of methods that allow decision makers to consider a set of criteria. (which are often contradictory) are to select, rank, order or describe a set of alternatives in the decision making process.
SAW

In this method, which is also known as the weighted linear combination method, after de-scaling the decision matrix, using the weight coefficients of the criteria, the de-scaled decision matrix is obtained and according to this matrix, the score of each option is calculated. will be Below are the calculation steps of the SAW model First step: Forming the decision matrix Second step: Descale the decision matrix In this step, criteria with different dimensions are tried to be converted into dimensionless criteria, and the matrix R is defined as follows:To descale the positive and negative criteria, the following relationships are used:The third step: determining the weight vector of the criteria At this stage, according to the importance coefficients of different criteria in decision-making, the weight vector of the criteria is defined as follows:Fourth step: choosing the best option At this stage, the best option is obtained from the following relationship:

Following the increase in the population of cities and the development of urban life, cities have always faced all kinds of physical, social, economic, and environmental problems, and solving these problems is the most important challenge facing urban planners and managers. Considering that the atmosphere of a city is formed within the neighborhood and continues based on it, therefore the development of the neighborhood is considered as one of the most important factors to achieve sustainable development. Considering that urban livability can be considered as an effective step towards sustainable development and considering that it is not possible to manage and improve the condition of neighborhoods in a region at the same time. On this basis, a comparative comparison based on different models of decision-making among all localities can help the performance and better decision-making of urban planners to improve the quality of life and well-being of citizens in accordance with the priority of intervention at the level of these localities and in different planning periods. It's worth it. Therefore, in this research, the livability of the neighborhoods of the three cities of Ardabil was measured from the environmental perspective; And following this goal, which localities in Region 3 of Ardabil city are in a better condition than others; The surveyed localities were prioritized using the SAW model.By ranking, you can find out the status of localities, which means that by comparative comparison, you can find out which category of localities are in good condition and which category is in unfavorable condition, so that the necessary measures can be taken in this case. Therefore, in this research, the aim is to measure and rank the livability of the areas of the 3rd district of Ardabil city in terms of the environmental dimension. Based on this, using the SAW model, the study areas have been prioritized. It is a favorable situation. Hafez town with a score of (0.727) has the best condition and the first place among the studied localities, followed by Rizvan towns with a score of (0.694), Azadi (0.681), Azadegan (0.678), In the second to fourth place, they are in a favorable situation, and Malabashi and Melayoussef neighborhoods are in the most unfavorable situation and in the last place, with scores of (0.275) and (0.265), respectively, and Imam Reza (a.s.) and Janbazan settlements with equal scores ( 0.682) have been placed in the same rank. In general, the opinions of the citizens are in accordance with the condition of the localities observed in the field survey and do not differ much from the existing conditions. It should be mentioned that Hafez, Rizvan, Azadi and Azadegan settlements are in a favorable situation based on the findings of the questionnaire, because they are part of the prosperous and well-off urban classes, while Melayoussef and Malabashi are informal settlement areas. They have an unfavorable situation in all the studied indicators and live in unfavorable conditions. According to the findings of the research, the total average livability of area 3 of Ardabil city is equal to 3.24 and more than the average of 3.