Recognizing the Concept of Social Sustainability in Urban Studies, in Search of a Theoretical Framework

Social sustainability to respond to the cities’ social problems and issues and as an efficient dimension in achieving sustainable urban development is a discourse that urban researchers have highly regarded in the last two decades, and researchers have looked at it with different dimensions of the urban built environment. The critical issue is the lack of comprehensive and systematic research in urban built environments, policies and plans. Therefore, the purpose of this study is a meta-synthesis review of selected sources to clarify the dimensions of social sustainability in these areas. Four categories of urban form, policies and plans, dimensions and features and the main areas of social sustainability have been identified by data coding using the MAXQDA software to achieve this goal. By understanding and explaining the stated categories, the results of the studies are presented in a framework of social sustainability, including conceptualization, policy-making and action in the urban built environment. Each dimension enters democracy-based, participation-based, and ideology-based discourses in a more remarkable synthesis. A deep understanding of the results provides a basis for future studies to conduct further studies in each proposed discourse and link them more effectively to social sustainability.