Social and cultural Impact Assessment of Sports Complexes: A Case Study of Narmak Sports Complex

One of the biggest problems facing cities, especially large ones is inadequate share and distribution of sports facilities due to the size of urban population and insufficient government budget. Construction of Narmak Sports Complex is one of the projects that have been implemented with the aim of developing sports and leisure area aligned with the Comprehensive Master-plan for Tehran City and the Detailed Plan of Region 8. It also aimed to transform a polluted site into a service area. The present study seeks to identify the social and cultural impacts of this project and to estimate the positive and negative outcomes within the project-affected area. This research took a mixed approach combining documentary and field methods, and tools such as observation, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and focused group discussions were used to collect data. The findings of this study show that besides positive impacts such as increasing sports space per capita, eliminating environmental pollution, improving the urban landscape, reducing household costs, reducing perceived public insecurity, enriching leisure activity patterns, etc., this project also has negative impacts such as reducing market share of pre-existing sports complexes, causing traffic problems due to lack of parking space and increasing traffic jams in the area.