Assessing the quality of Rasht's environment from the diversity-oriented urban planning perspective (with emphasis on the four social groups of women, the disabled, the elderly and children)

Urban planning mechanisms in some countries, by recognizing diversity of urban dwellers have shifted towards applying diversity-oriented approaches and incorporating diversities and differences into urban planning processes. But Iran's urban planning mechanism and consequently Rasht’s planning mechanism, which continue to deal with citizens as the same and neglect differences in age, sex, ethnicity, religion, physical ability and thus differences in their needs in city. The purpose of this study is to evaluate urban environment quality of Rasht from the diversity-oriented urban planning perspective and respond to needs of diverse social groups. Self-regulated questionnaires were used to collect data and one-sample t-test and structural equation modeling in SPSS and Smart PLS software were used to analyze the data. One-sample t-test results show that quality of the city's environment in terms of indicators such as safety and security, public facilities, employment, public transportation, outdoor spaces and public buildings is below average in response to the needs of all four social groups. Also, the results of structural equation modeling show that the indicator of public facilities has the greatest impact on quality of urban environment for women and children and the three indicators of public transportation, outdoor spaces and public buildings have the greatest impact on quality of urban environment for the disabled and the elderly. Therefor there is a need to shift from the current assimilative approach to diversity-oriented urban planning approach to incorporate diversities and differences in urban policy-making and planning processes.