Prioritizing pedestrianization of the adjacent routs of Masoumeh holly shrine, Qom city

In the last decades, pedestrianization as one of the most powerful and effective strategies for redesigning street has been employed to reduce the negative consequences of car dependency. Moreover, this strategy has been widely recognized as an effective policy to economic prosperity and revitalization of social life in the downtowns. Global experiences on pedestrianization revealed that this strategy could reduce environmental impacts of car-driven policies and might lead to socio-economic and physical regeneration of cities. However, in most developing countries like Iran, the over-emphasis on the priority of car mobility has led to reducing quality of urban life, especially in city centers. In this context, the Qom city as one of the Iran’s metropolises experienced similar problems over the last few decades. Like most urban centers, the downtown of this metropolis faces many problems such as economic decline and social and environmental deterioration. In the past few years, exacerbation of these issues has caused politicians and urban managers to put the pedestrian projects on their agenda. However, the main challenging issue for the planner is prioritizing the pedestrianization of routs due to financial limitations and walkability. Accordingly, this paper prioritizes the adjacent routs of Masoumeh holly shrine, Qom city, for implementing pedestrianization projects. The research method is combined and we used Delphi technique to criteria selection. Based on Delphi method 13 criteria were chosen to prioritize and choose the most appropriate street. Moreover, we have conducted a survey for exploring people and pilgrim's perspectives about quantities and qualities features of routs. Finally, AHP technique was used for weighing the criteria and ArcGIS platform was employed to overlay the criteria to make a composite map, which shows the appropriate route for the pedestrian project. The people and pilgrims’ perspectives about quantities and qualities features of routs showed that Eram St. was more appropriate than others routs for implementing pedestrian project. However, Moallem St. is the most unsuitable routs. Nonetheless, analyzing secondary data indicated that although Eram St. has appropriate width, length, parking facilities, and slope, many historical buildings lay in Azar Street. Finally, based on AHP and expert's opinions, 13 criteria were chosen to prioritize the streets. Social and economic indicators gained the highest scores. By using GIS, all these scores were entered to the base maps database. Thus, by the reclassification of layers, Eram was selected as the most appropriate street for pedestrianization. Generally, integrating the people and pilgrims’ perspectives, secondary analysis and expert’s views showed that Eram Street, because of enjoying mixed land uses and diverse activities, crowded pedestrian network, and the existence of parking facilities, is the most suitable route for beginning pedestrianization. Azar and Taleghani Streets were in the next priority.