nterpretive- Structural Analysis of Criteria and Indices of Social Sustainability in Urban Neighborhoods (Case Study: Neighborhoods of ARDABIL City)

According to the changes of growth and development approaches, social sustainability has been considered as one of the branches of sustainable development in recent years. Since there are different and conflicting ideas such as soft or hard indicators, social sustainability as a product or process and social sustainability as a part of sustainable development or social sustainability as a Precondition to it, different variables have been proposed to evaluate social sustainability in urban communities. These variables have cause-effect and direct- indirect relations. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine the level of each variable and discover their cause- effect relations. To determine the level of each variable and discover their cause- effect relations, interpretative structural modeling approach has been used. In order to provide input data a 47*47 matrix was given to seventeen urban planning experts and the binary relations between variables was evaluated. Results show that social sustainability indicators can be classified into sixteen levels. The indicators were classified as following: Political and organizing indicators as fundamental level (the lowest level), social and special justice indicators as connective level (middle level) and indicators related to social welfare as product of social sustainability process (the highest level).According to ISM the dominant approaches of social sustainability should change from product base to process base. This approach can connect social variables to economical, physical and organizational indicators and in an integrated process result in social welfare