Capacity Building of Local Community Development in Line with Sustainable Development: The Coexistence of Poverty Contextual Variables and Geographic Space

Coexistence of poverty and geographical space is a conceptual formation implying the importance of capacity building in producing space for sustainable development. Capacity building is a procedural concept. Practice of democracy and production of civil living space for participation and transition to the social development are more important in contemporary modern urban planning. Now we know communities and civil societies are the main factors making democratic space to growing actors and private sector institutions. This study aimed at conceptualizing social matter priority and social development capacity building in the sustainable urban development process. The approach is descriptive-analytic and the method is survey. The independent variables of the study were tested through a close-ended questionnaire on a Likert scale. The population consisted of all households in Karmandan and Islamabad neighborhoods of Zanjan city with a population of 13368 and 35820, respectively. These two neighborhoods are of different social, economic, cultural, physical, and environmental backgrounds. Results of one sample T-test shows significant relationship between sustainable development and the local community development capacity building. The factorial analysis addressing the second hypothesis indicates that the economic factor with an average of 0.700 and institutional factor with 0.736 have the highest impact on the spatio-locational context of the community capacity building. Second hypothesis T-test also signals a significant relationship among the variables of eightfold factors affecting capacity building background. The findings suggest micro spatio-locational planning of the urban neighborhoods with special emphasis on cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, locationally improving poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and collecting micro-components to regenerate the neighborhoods.