Developing a Conceptual Model of the Quality of Life in Cities with Emphasis on Housing Indicators - Case Study: 5 Regions of Urmia City

The city, as human life, plays a fundamental role in creating a feeling of satisfaction, and in fact, it shapes the lifestyle of a person and determines the quality of his life. It should be noted that the quality of housing is directly related to the quality of life and the social and economic development of different communities; in such a way that the accommodation of families in inappropriate housing has become the basis of social problems and anomalies, which in turn, unfavorable social conditions will cause negative economic effects for societies. Quality of life studies can identify problematic areas, causes of people's dissatisfaction, residents' priorities. In life, the influence of socio-demographic factors on the quality of life and to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and strategies in the field of quality of life. According to the above, the purpose of this research was to measure the quality of life in Urmia city and five regions based on housing indicators. The originality and innovation of the current research can be expressed in the application of the new BWM (2015) and MARCOS (2019) models as well as the combined physical, economic, social and demographic indicators.

According to its purpose, this research is an applied research and according to the method of doing the work, it has a descriptive-analytical nature. The information was collected through library studies, field studies and census data of Iran Statistics Center in 2015. Thus, after studying the sources related to the research topic, 12 indicators have been selected to reach the research output, which include household density in a residential unit, population density in a residential unit, building age, building quality, building strength, land value, access to services. Education and treatment, housing ownership, plot area, infrastructure level, access to green space and residential density. Considering that each of the housing indicators used to model the quality of life has a different importance coefficient, therefore, in this article, the opinions of elites have been used to determine the weight of the indicators. In order to weight the indicators based on the BWM method, 10 questionnaires whose content is based on the pairwise comparison of indicators based on the preference of the best indicator over other indicators and the preference of other indicators over the worst indicator have been compiled. In the next step, the data of the questionnaires were entered into the GAMS software and were calculated and analyzed. The highest weight obtained is related to the building quality index with 0.201 and the lowest is related to the age of the building with an importance coefficient of 0.017. After calculating the weight of the indicators, in order to perform spatial analysis, first the information layers of the indicators were digitized and edited in the software of the geographic information system, and by converting the information layers into a raster and standardizing them based on the purpose of the research, the importance coefficient calculated from BWM in each of The indicators have been multiplied and the combination of the indicators has been discussed by applying weighting. In the last step, the MARCOS model was used to evaluate the quality of life in the five regions of Urmia.

Results & Disscussion:

After the 12 indicators of housing to measure the quality of life in the geographic information system software were classified and analyzed using the reclassification command and based on the research objectives, in order to model the quality of life in the city of Urmia by using the summation command and applying the obtained weights Based on the best-worst method, the indicators have been combined. The results of the combination of 12 housing indicators to model the quality of life in Urmia show that 23% of the city is in the very low quality of life zone, 34% in the low quality of life zone, 13% in the medium quality of life zone, 20% in the The quality of life is high and 11% is in the area of ​​very high quality of life. Based on the output obtained from the Marcus model, in Urmia city, region one, region five, region two, region three and region four are ranked 1 to 5 in terms of quality of life based on housing indicators.

The obtained results indicate that in general the quality of life in the eastern, northern, and northwestern parts of Urmia city is at an inappropriate level due to the presence of informal settlements, and the Shahrchai River border, which includes the 1st and 5th May areas. Due to the newly built area, it is in high quality. The results of the separate analysis of the indicators show that the quality of life in Urmia city based on the indicators of households in a residential unit, people in a residential unit, the strength of buildings, the area of ​​plots, access to educational and medical services and green space in a medium to high condition and based on the indicators The age of the building, the quality of the building, the value of the land, the level of infrastructure, housing ownership and residential density are in a medium to low condition.