Evaluation of Social Capital as a Key Factor in Improving the Quality of Life in a New City, Case Study: Pardis New City

One of the impressive aspects of urban planning is social aspect while this aspect is often the most neglected one in urban planning in Iran because it is not clear how this issue influences on urban planning, although the majority of experts have admitted the influence of this issue. In this study for a better explanation of how the social aspects influence on urban planning, the relationship between the concept of “social capital” and other concepts of urban planning that called “quality of urban life” has investigated. For this purpose Pardis new city has been studied as case study. The reason for this choice is that new towns have the main challenges of urban and regional planning in our country. So paying more attention to the social aspects of these cities is usually more important because of heterogeneous populations that live in these cities. In general, the internal problems of the new towns in Iran t lead the failure of low-level “quality of life” in these cities. Incidentally, if it raises the quality of life in new cities, their success will also increase. The main purpose of this study is the investigation of relationship between the concept of social capital and the subjective quality of urban life. Subjective quality of life in the city means citizens’ Satisfaction rate is the Combination of various factors that effect on quality of life such as physical aspects, social aspects, economic aspects, etc. The point of choosing of the concept of social capital is that this concept is measurable. So it is hoped that social aspects can be used in targeting and monitoring in urban planning. On the other hand, social issues will find their place in urban planning. Based on, this present study is to be followed through these following hypotheses: 1. The amount of social capital in Pardis new city is low. 2. The subjective quality of life in Pardis new city is low. 3. Between social capital and subjective quality of urban life in Pardis new city is a significant relationship. 4. Between social capital and willingness to stay at city (population survival rates) can be seen a significant relationship. 5. Between the subjective quality of urban life and survival rate of population is a significant relationship. The methodology of this study is descriptive- correlational. This study is crosssectional study. This study is descriptive, since it involves complex procedures that aim to describe the situation or phenomenon that is studied. This research aimed to describe the regular and continuous level of social capital and the subjective quality of life of urban residents in Pardis new city and find the relationship between these two concepts. This research is a correlation research, because it includes all the different variables and the correlation coefficient between them. This study also reviewed the correlation between social capital and the subjective quality of life. In a more general classification, this research combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. This research is quantitative research to explain and describe the relationship between specific variables. It can be classified as a case study research and qualitative research. In fact, this research has reviewed all aspects of a particular phenomenon and investigated the relationship between social capital and the subjective quality of life in a specific place and for a limited period of time. In this research to find out the indices and to understand the basic concepts of study, documentation and library method was used. Then the indicators were developed. The questionnaire was designed to achieve Indicators. This questionnaire was a mix of closed questions in which the Likert scale of 1 to 5 was used and its main purpose was to measure social capital and the subjective quality of urban life in Pardis new city. Moreover, all documents, plans and programs in organizations and institutions have been studied. The results indicate the low level of social capital and subjective quality of life between residents of Pardis. The main hypothesis of this study which was the situation of the relationship between social capital and subjective quality of urban life was proved. A significant correlation between the tendency to stay at Pardis City and subjective quality of urban life was seen. Finally, a model is presented for evaluating and showing how the concepts interact.