Social-physical sustainability of Mashhad suburbs through empowering local communities

The increasing growth of urbanization along with the expansion of the peri-urban space in the big cities of Iran is one of the most important concerns of planners and official city managements and national managers. On the other hand, organizing the residents of dysfunctional structures in peri-urban spaces, centered on their all-round participation based on the empowerment of local communities, is one of the ways out of the socio-physical instability of peri-urban spaces in megacities. The role of empowering local communities, especially the residents of peri-urban spaces, in achieving socio-physical sustainability is a prominent indicator of this research. Although some past researches have examined the relationship between empowerment and sustainable development, most of them have not emphasized the concept of socio-physical sustainability with a participatory approach and in addition, they have not evaluated the components of socio-physical sustainability and empowerment at the same time. are Therefore, the present study tries to complete this new approach and examine the main goal of this research, which is to measure the effectiveness of empowering local communities in the socio-physical sustainability of the mentioned neighborhoods from the perspective of people's participation. The role of empowering local communities, especially the residents of peri-urban spaces, in achieving socio-physical sustainability is a prominent indicator of this research. Although some past researches have examined the relationship between empowerment and sustainable development, most of them have not emphasized the concept of socio-physical sustainability with a participatory approach and in addition, they have not evaluated the components of socio-physical sustainability and empowerment at the same time. are Therefore, the present study tries to complete this new approach and examine the main goal of this research, which is to measure the effectiveness of empowering local communities in the socio-physical sustainability of the mentioned neighborhoods from the perspective of people's participation.The current research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in nature. The information needed in this research has been collected by two methods of documentary study and field investigation, especially the researcher's objective observations and findings, as well as interviews, completion of questionnaires, and preparation of documents and audio and video documents. The statistical population of this research is the population living in Shahid Bahonar and Shahid Baskabadi neighborhoods. The statistical sample was calculated using Cochran's formula of 379 people. The sampling method is random sampling. In order to evaluate the relationships between variables and infer the results for inferential statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficient method, univariate t-test and ANOVA and software such as EXCEL and SPSS have been widely used.In the studied sample, the total number of respondents is 379, of which 40.9% of respondents are female and 59.1% are male. In addition, 73.6% have a diploma and less than 15% are illiterate. Also, most of the respondents (82.3 percent) lived in the region for more than ten years in terms of the duration of residence in the region, and in terms of age, the largest number of respondents are in the age range of 20 to 30 years (42.5 percent) and In terms of marital status, the largest number of respondents are married with 67.8%.The significance level of the influence of social and physical stability factors in local communities is equal to 0.000 and less than 0.05, also the value of t statistic is equal to 64.997 and positive and the average influence of social and physical stability factors on the Local social empowerment is equal to 115.4286 and is higher than the average number of 3, so we can say with 95% confidence: the components of social and physical stability such as social trust, social participation, social interaction, place belonging, sense of security, residential satisfaction, social equality , access and network of roads, physical quality of the building, accessibility to services and the combination and variety of uses have an impact on the sustainability of local communities. Also, according to the results of the ANOVA test, it is clear that the significance level is lower than 0.05, which means that the variance of the independent groups of empowerment of local communities are not equal. This means that there is a significant difference in the empowerment component between psychological, social, economic and political factors. Correlation coefficient has also been used to check the correlation between the dependent variable (physical-social stability) and the independent variable (empowerment). The results show that with increasing empowerment, social-physical stability also increases. Based on the obtained standard beta, for each unit of change in the standard deviation of social trust as much as 0.433%, there is a change in the standard deviation of the dependent variable of social and physical stability; Therefore, the contribution and role of social trust in explaining sustainability variables is much higher than other empowerment variables. Therefore, according to the results obtained from the statistical analysis in the current research, it can be claimed that one of the tools that urban management can use to create and maintain social and physical sustainability in peri-urban spaces is the empowerment of the residents of these spaces.