Presenting the Exploratory-Experimental Model of Factors Inhibiting the Realization of Urban Comprehensive Plans(Case Study: Shiraz Metropolis)

A general review shows that in most cities of Iran, objectives of urban comprehensive plans have not been realized; in other words, the realizability of these plans is in undesirable status. By plan unrealizability we mean that its objectives were not achieved. The goals of urban development plans pertain to population attraction, access network, passages, and public services. Public services include those that are normally not demanded in the market. The main problem of plan realizability is in the public services sector. These services are offered in five categories of parks and green spaces as well as educational, health-care, cultural, and sport spaces. Unfortunately, it was found in our studies that less than 10% of objectives was achieved in this sector. Implementation of such plans should be undertaken by the public sector (the government and municipality) and the market is not interested in doing so.As one of the most crucial urban hotspots of Iran, Shiraz is no exception and its urban comprehensive plan is facing significant unrealizability, particularly in service uses. The unrealizability can be clearly observed in per capita of park and green space, educational, sport, health-care, cultural, and religious uses. Surveys show that despite the importance of the studied subject and the role of Shiraz in economic, social, and cultural development of the southern part of the country, no research has been so far conducted on the subject. Accordingly, the essential questions that the researchers of the present study intend to explain include: what are the most important factors inhibiting the realization of service uses in the comprehensive plan of Shiraz? And what are the major executive strategies to remove the identified obstacles?

The present research is an applied study in terms of nature and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. The study aims at identifying factors inhibiting the realization of urban plans in Iran’s metropolises, in this case Shiraz, Fars. Statistical population includes all urban managers and experts as well as the faculty members of Fars universities, who have scientific expertise and work experience in the studied subject. Due to the census limitations and the fact that no precise and authentic source was found for the size of the mentioned statistical population, to determine the sample size, a method is used in which no statistical sample size is required. Therefore, using the respective relation, 170 persons were considered as the statistical sample. In addition to interview, the main tool to collect the required field data was a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was finally confirmed by referring to respective experts and being modified for several times. In order to check the reliability of the used tool, a pilot study with 30 questionnaires was conducted, and the reliability of the designed questionnaire was confirmed based on the obtained Cronbach’s alpha coefficient as 0.863. In order to analyze the data according to the research objectives, frequency distribution table, one-sample t test, and exploratory factor analysis were conducted in SPSS, and Amos was also used to consider the fitness of the obtained model.

Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the most important factors inhibiting the realization of comprehensive plan of Shiraz in the form of several key, limited factors and determine the variance explained by each factor. Research results identified five important factors inhibiting the realization of comprehensive plan of the studied area, which could explain 69.7% of variance of the dependent variable. The identified factors and their explanation percent are respectively as follows in terms of importance: management weakness (20.09), weak points in plan preparation, compilation and approval process (13.9), weak financial and economic status of operating institutions (13.15), administrative and legal obstacles (11.38), and negligence of collaborative opportunities (11.18). Moreover, the research results indicated that the final experimental model of factors inhibiting the realization of comprehensive plan in Shiraz has good fitness and confirms the identified exploratory model.

Over the past years, various plans were prepared and implemented by scholars, policy-makers and planners to develop the urban spaces. One of the most important and common plans is urban comprehensive plan which can be traced back to the years before the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Despite the desirable visions devised for these plans, evidence of their past preparation and implementation in Iran indicates that despite enormous costs spent for these plans, they have not been well realized and this results from obstacles that the present research intends to identify, specifically in Shiraz. Research results showed that the most important factors inhibiting the realization of urban comprehensive plan in Shiraz include: management weakness; weak points in plan preparation, compilation and approval process; weak financial and economic status of operating institutions; administrative and legal obstacles; and negligence of collaborative opportunities. Although conforming the results of the present research to those of other studies confirms them, the results of the experimental model of confirmatory factor analysis also confirms the identified factors as the most important factors inhibiting the realization of urban comprehensive plan in Shiraz and similar urban spaces.In order to remove the factors inhibiting the realization of the urban comprehensive plan in the studied area, the following executive suggestions are presented according to the obtained results and the opinions of urban experts and professionals: specifying the tasks of operating organizations and institutions and preventing parallel work; integrating the urban management; proper punishment for violators of plan preparation, approval and implementation processes; excluding personal opinions and political attitudes from the plan preparation, approval and implementation processes; appointing qualified consulting engineers and experts to prepare the urban comprehensive plan; including citizens’ collaboration in all preparation, approval and implementation stages of the plan; carefully and technically supervising the plan preparation, approval and implementation processes; and obliging the operating institutions to enforce the approvals.Key words: sustainable development, urban spaces, comprehensive plan, Shiraz metropolis