Evaluation of qualitative and quantitative housing indices of Iran informal settlements (Case study: Jamshid Abad, Khoy)

Introduction After industrial revolution in Europe, Informal settlements have been known as shadow cities with geographical redistribution of population from rural to urban areas and a rural-urban living style. At the recent decades, this phenomenon is forming in developing countries.. According to the available data, about 1/5 up to 1/3 population of the developing countries live in the informal settlements. Neglecting the acceptance of psychosocial changes, people who live in these settlements suffer economical changes in the time period. Housing as the smallest unit of space is the symbol of the socio-economic status of a household and settlement. Therefore, the evident differences between the quantitative and the qualitative housing indices depict the differences between the informal settlements of countries, the settlements and the city and the all of settlements. On the other hand, possessing an appropriate housing is emphasized in several UN worldwide manifests as well as the 31st Iranian constitution principle. Investigating the housing qualitative and quantitative indices would simplify the decision making for urban, regional and national policy makings. Therefore, this study attempts to answer the question that what is the condition of the informal settlements in comparison with the main city based on the selected indices. In order to answer the above question, one of the informal settlements named as Jamshid Abad, which stands around Khoy, was selected and an adaptive comparison between housing qualitative and quantitative indices of it and the main city was well in accomplished. So this article has been showed the hosting indices which applied in other countries base on available data. 2- Methodology Data were collected through documental and fieldwork methods. Field procurement was accomplished using the sampling technique applying a questionnaire. The random method has been applied in sampling process. In the present investigation, the samples number, were obtained using the Cochran formula with 140 samples. 3- Discussion The quantitative indices of housing include family residential density, person density in residential units, density of people in a single room, the room in a dwelling unit density, the average number of rooms per household, and the average level of infrastructure. The results showed that these indices are in undesirable levels in compare with the main city and are in desirable level in relative to developing countries. In this study, the qualitative indices of housing include history, types of building materials, structure status, the way of seizing, the land, and the type of housing have been identified. The results showed that the status of Jamshid Abad is relatively desirable, although there is a distance between Khoy city and Jamshid Abad. The results also indicated that Jamshid Abad has better conditions in comparison to the developing countries. On the other hand, there exist some differences from the viewpoint of basic services accessibilities such as water, electricity, telephone, gas, bathroom, kitchen, etc, which are indices of housing quality. 4- Conclusion Results generally indicated low standard of housing in the Jamshid Abad neighborhood in comparison to KHoy city. However, the condition of Jamshid Abad neighborhood is better in relative to informal settlements in developing countries according to the studied indices. Since the mentioned settlement is a part of the country housing space, it is possible to some extent to accept the claim that the informal settlement conditions in Iran are better than that of the majority of the informal settlements in developing countries. Another issue confirms the above statement is the fact that no shantytown patterns such as thicket, hut, and slums were not found.