Evaluation of Subjective Social Sustainability among Citizens in Hesar-e-Imam Informal Settlement in Hamedan City

Urban Areas’ function as productive center for political and socio-economic development of countries has been faced great challenges in forms of environmental degradation, insecurity, unemployment, lack of housing, traffic congestion and informal settlements. In recent decades, most of metropolitan areas, as a matter of unplanned rural-urban immigration and natural increase of city populations, has been witnessed appearance of informal settlements which can be marked by poverty and malfunction of socio-economic situations. Scrutinizing survey in these settlements shows that level of social sustainability are low in them. The research tries to investigate level of subjective social sustainability in accordance with citizens’ inspirations and conceptions from quality of life perspective. Structural equation modeling is used for evaluation of variables’ relations and analyzing the questionnaires. Results shows that education criteria via two indexes of accessibility to educational services and literacy, hygiene criteria via two indexes of accessibility to hygienic facilities and accessibility to drinking water and sewage facilities, and quality of life criteria via two indexes of accessibility to public transportation and housing quality, are important criteria for social sustainability of the area. Omission of participation criteria from the important ones show that the area needs to be focused by social researchers and practitioners for empowering citizens through community planning to improve environment by self help actions.