A Feasibility Study on Qualitative Indicators in Isfahan City

Quality of urban life is known as one of the major elements of urban development. Thus, evaluation urban environmental quality has much importance in the planning of urban development. Cities are complex ecosystems affected by social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors. Inefficient urban planning and management and lack of coherent environmental policies have led to many urban environmental problems in a lot of modern cities. The number and scope of these problems are significant and they are becoming serious threats to the health and safety of residents. Environmental damages in large cities of Iran such as Isfahan have threatened health and welfare of the residents. Therefore, evaluation of environmental elements quality in Isfahan city for identifying the current state of environment is necessary. Thus, the main objective of this study is to measure qualitative indicators in different fields using urban environmental quality evaluation model in Isfahan city. Recent experiences for providing the analytical methods in urban environmental quality evaluation have shown the worth of indicators. Therefore various collections of indicators have designed for evaluation of urban environmental quality. The Foundation’s work on urban sustainability indicators started in 1994 when some researchers proposed a set of indicators based upon the charter of European sustainable cities and towns. The framework was subsequently tested by the cities participating in the research network of medium-sized cities. In another research, the Sustainable Society Index (SSI) has been developed for use in 135 different countries. The SSI integrates the most important aspects of sustainability and quality of life of a national society in a simple and transparent way. In another research, urban sustainability is evaluated by 19 indicators in four cities in China. Although, all four cities are moving towards sustainable development, the current situation shows still weak sustainability in three cities and even non-sustainability in one. Researchers in Italy used the Dashbourd of Sustainability to measure the local urban sustainable development. 61 various indicators has presented in their work. The Dashboard of Sustainability (DS) is a mathematical and graphical tool designed to integrate the complex influences of sustainability and to support the decision-making process by creating concise evaluations. In a similar study, 51 sustainability indicators have selected for evaluation of the urban characteristic of Taipei city. These indicators are classified into economic, social, environmental, and institutional dimensions. Analysis of the results demonstrates that social and environmental indicators are moving towards sustainability indicators, while economical and institutional dimensions are performing poorly. Some of the best foresaid have been used appropriately in order to evaluate urban environment in Isfahan. Iran has recently paid special attention to evaluate the urban environmental quality by the use of various indicators too. In a main study, after reviewing traditional methods, a model has been presented for evaluation of urban environmental quality. On the other hand, quantitative and qualitative characteristics of Tehran’s environmental quality were evaluated as average with a score of 53.3% in a similar study that was conducted in 1996. After that, Tehran's urban environmental quality has been evaluated again by reforming and optimization of previous indicators.