An Investigation on Factors and Backgrounds for Increasing Public Participation in the Process of Reconstruction of Worn Out Texture in Tehran's 14th Municipal District

Nowadays, many cities’ older areas face different problems due to the population growth, urban sprawl and lack of new services to old city centers (Asadian&Sayahi,2012), increasing the rate of urban deterioration as a living creature (Lotfi&Malekshahi,2011), turning them into the residence of low-income immigrants (Khademi &Jokar,2015). Consequently, in order to reconstruct and prevent further distressing of such areas, urban managers have conducted various plans in cities; most of them were unsuccessful (Maleki,2005). One of the most important factors which hinders achieving the goals of such plannings can be attributed to the lack of public participation (Zadeh &Andalib,2014). Participation can be described as a social, public, coherent, multi-dimensional and multi-cultural process whose purpose is to attract people to play their role at every stage of development. The mentioned process, possesses various specific institutional, social, economic and cultural aspects which are vital to improve the level of participations. In the comprehensive plan for the 14th municipal district, this city is known as a district with high distress level, particularly in its western part. The population density of this district is high and 60% of its houses are under 100 m2. Therefore, the goal of this study, while investigating the necessity and outcomes of public participation, is to develop efficient solutions in order to bring about participation of citizens in the process of modernization of the 14th municipal district worn out texture and recognizing the main indexes of this field for improving participation projects in other worn out texture of Tehran and other Iran cities. To this end, this study has based its primary presumption on low participation willingness of the 14th district worn out texture in the reconstruction process of such areas. Meanwhile, we have assumed that financial factors play the most important role in the decrease of studied residents’ willingness to participate in this sector.
The utilized method in this research is a descriptive-analytic one and data collection has been achieved using questionnaires distributed among householders in 1394 in worn out texture of 14th municipal district. Data collection was done using field surveys in order to investigate public participation in modernization and reconstruction of studied worn out texture. In this regard, questionnaires were completed based on quota random sampling with a sample size of 380 house numbers. Such sample size was achieved using Cochran method. In the reliability study of the questionnaire, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient turned out to be 0.77 which depicts the inherent reliability of the questionnaire. SPSS was used to analyze each of the indexes.
The results of this study show that the willingness of stuided area residents to participate in the modernization process of worn out text has been moderate. The T-test has confirmed the moderate condition. Other reuslts indicate that one the the most important factors which leads to more public participation levels, is presenting an economic, social and environmental perspective of the district and area after the modernization process to the residents. The results of this study for state factors and infleuntial institutions in the field of modernization show that the most important factos which have an effect on the residents participation level is “banking facilities predicted for modernization” and “assurance from the realization of private and state sector contractors vows”. For the case of environmental and framework factors, “accessibility to health centers”, “area of inhabitant places” and “visual beauty and quality of buildings in that area” were the most important ones. For the case of economic factors, “family capability in saving and returning the loans”, “satisfaction from housing deposits” and “waiting time to receive loans” play the most sifnificant roles in participation. On the other hand it was revealed that in the studied area, the reluctance of resdients in staying in the quarters, depsite the feeling of belonging to the quarter and also Tehran, is an indication of lack of satisfaction from life low quality in such quarters. Among social indexes, saftey, robbery, and drug usage in the quarters were the pscychological dysfunctions affecting the citizens.
The 14th municipal district of Tehran is known as one of the districts with the highest level of worn out in which, the subdistricts 1, 2 and 4 constitute 98% of worn out texts. In concluding the study, it can be mentioned that in the studied district, success in modernization of such high volumes of d worn out texts is not possible solely through financial and banking packages and various economic, social, environmental and institutional factors are influential and neglecting them, reduces the efficacy of modernization plans alongside the public participation. This shows the interconnection of different urban issues and results from the complicated nature of cities.