Assessment of Karaj Current Development Plan Based on the Smart Growth

Sprawl is a form of fast and scattered growth of urban and metropolitan areas that in some cases even connects the city to rural areas. In current times, there are many cities throughout the world that have missed a substantial amount of their natural resources and valuable open spaces due to improper utilization of land and sprawl. Hence, not only the life conditions of their dwellers have been degraded, but rather the opportunity of their future generations for taking advantage of city resources have been diminished. This sort of growth that has many adverse effects on ecological, economical and social aspects of a society could be seen in some cities of Iran as well. One of the cities in Iran that suffers from sprawl is the city of Karaj. Until 1966, this city had a “Garden City-like” appearance. However, because of the growth of immigration and demolition of gardens and green areas from one side and also conveyance of agricultural water to the city of Tehran, collapse of gardens and emergence of new neighborhoods, uncontrolled construction along the Tehran-Ghazvin Connecting Road, and finally joining of several peripheral urban systems of the city of Karaj, it has been transformed to the today city of Karaj. One of the main challenges of this city is its physical growth that has caused its gardens and agricultural lands to demolish and the cost of urban services to increase. Its other problems are scattered construction sites, heavy traffic, loss of identity and social characteristics of neighborhoods, pollution, destruction of natural sceneries, decrease in quality of life and so forth. One way of confronting this unorganized growth is taking Smart Growth principles into consideration while preparing city development plans. Smart Growth is one of the most significant forms of development against sprawl and with its focus on city revitalization and expanding transportation alternatives; it pursues creating social places in a way that people show inclination to live in. This paper has been prepared with the aim of assessing the proposed development plan of the city of Karaj based on Smart Growth indicators, and results in designating of planning priorities for the city of Karaj by applying Smart Growth principles. In order to assess the aforementioned plan, at the phase of determining the Significance Coefficients of criteria and sub criteria, the AHP technique has been used and at the phase of determining the extent to which this plan has brought sub criteria into consideration and as a result of this, determining the planning priorities based on smart growth criteria, a simple Ranking Method (Ranks from 0 to 7) has been utilized. This research reveals that the above-mentioned plan has obtained 52.84 percent of the total score. In other words, the plan relatively conforms to the principles of Smart Growth in terms of the development of the city. However, it is clear that this plan shows more strength in some indicators and sub-indicators, and less in others which demonstrate the planning priorities. The most important weak points of this plan are mainly related to the subjects like: plan monitoring, equal access to information, and social participation in the process of making decisions, and almost all of these have roots in the system of preparing development plans in Iran.