Typology of informal settlements in Iranian cities, comparative study of Sanandaj and Kermanshah

Informal settlements are tangible feature of urban poor in developing countries and can be recognized as a possible choice for them to build/buy a house with minimum cost and time consuming in urban areas. They have usually come up illegally either on the government land or private land in a haphazard manner in and around the city. They are unplanned and violating all norms of government planning. Bad houses with inadequate light, air, toilet and bathing facility; overcrowding and high density of population are some of the features of these informal settlements. They range from high density, squalid central city tenements to spontaneous squatter settlements without legal recognition or rights, sprawling at the edge of cities. Some are more than fifty years old, some are land invasions just underway. Due to the process and conditions of construction, environmental conditions, and other features, they are known by many different names around the country yet share the same miserable living conditions. To pursue this diversity in the informal settlements, a kind of comparative approach has been adopted regarding the typology of informal settlements in two cities of Kermanshah and Sanandaj. Regarding the economic characteristics, Kemanshah has attracted more migerations due to its location in the West of the Country, Accordiing to the fact that the migration to Kermanshah includes ethnic and cultural diversity so the variety of informal settelments has been more obvious. The results shows that the informal settlements of these cities can be classified based on the main factors of origin of formation, process of formation, location, size of settlements, and other sub-factors. This classification also revealed that there are different types of informal settlements in these cities regarding the geophysical conditions of the cities setting, historical process of cities development, and war. With a long record of history, the city of Kermanshah which located in a fertile plain surrounded by a strong rural hinterland and more contemporary changes has contained different types of informal settlements. On the contrary, the city of Sanandaj which surrounded by mountains and contained a limited and unified number of rural hinterlands has comprised less diversity in the typology of informal settlements. Within these cities, the most type of informal settlements is in relation to the successive division of agricultural land by individuals and speculators and in limited cases after the revolution, there is a type which can be classified as forcible seizure of land. Due to the geophysical setting, incorporated villages into urban built-up areas are the main type of informal settlements in the city of Kermanshah. Slum state is a kind of poor neigbourhoods of Kermanshah that was shaped by government but squatted by migrants of Iraq war. Although these public housings were built for public officers and acquirers, it was never evacuated by war immigrants and consequently they became slum states. regarding the” despair and hope” theory, the settlements are mainly the slum of Hope kind in both cities, Only Chaman neigbourhood can be some how interpreted as a slum of despair in Kermanshah.