Investigating Social Factors Affecting Residential Stability in Cities and Urban Quarters (Case Study: Arak City)

In the most modern cities, the traditional system of communications and interactions have been strongly changes whose one of their worrying appearance is fading the social relationships among citizens. Since the meaning and identity of urban environments is greatly dependent on their prevailing social system, the decrease of people’s social interactions changes the identity of these environments and spaces and fades their conceptual and functional authenticity. This matter leads to decrease of sense of community and consequently decrease of sense of place attachment whose reaction in urban quarters is a sense of indifference for residents about residential stability in quarters and in several cases, motivation for changing life area to other quarter or even other city. Regarding this issue, the present paper has investigated the social factors affecting citizens’ residential stability in Arak city and its quarters. The effect of social factors and their criteria on two settlement durability including ‘tendency to continue living in present quarter, and ‘tendency to continue living in Arak city’, was investigated. Needed data of research has been collected through library studies and questionnaire. For obtaining overall view about citizens’ evaluation on criteria of four social factors, One-sample T test was applied, and for clarifying relations of social factors and durability indicators Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for each pair of factors and indicators, and the influence of social factors on each of durability indicators was examined using Regression analysis. The result of study show a significant relation between mentioned factors and indicators, and based on regression analysis, 61% of the changes of indicator of ‘tendency to continue living in present quarter’ and 59% of the changes of indicator of ‘tendency to continue living in Arak city’ is explained through linear combination of changes of social factors.