Urban Regeneration in the Light of Social Innovation in Iranian Cities (Case Study: Neyshabur City)

The growth of the urban population has generated unequal access to basic infrastructure and created heterogeneous spaces in the urban fabric. For this reason, now all factors are looking to rethink the use of land in the way of urban regeneration. Urban regeneration consists of a comprehensive and integrated vision, which aims to solve urban problems and seeks to generate lasting changes in terms of economic, physical, social, environmental, and governmental conditions of areas that are subject to transformations/alterations. But in this process, more attention is paid to physical aspects, and social and cultural issues are less considered. Solving this shortcoming seems only possible by benefiting from social innovation. In this sense, social innovation refers to using networks, social relations, collaboration, social cohesion, human needs satisfaction, quality of life improvements, empowerment, sustainability, and scalability. For this purpose, the current research was carried out descriptively and analytically to investigate the possibility of benefiting from social innovation in the regeneration of heterogeneous textures in the city of Neishabur. The required data was collected from a sample of 30 specialists. These data were analyzed and evaluated using SWOT and ACCEPT techniques. The findings showed that in the heterogeneous contexts of Neyshabur, four strategies can be used in the field of social innovation. In the meantime, using the capacity of religious institutions and bodies to encourage people to participate in regeneration projects is given the highest priority. This finding indicates that city managers, companies, and organizations can use less costly but more effective approaches to regeneration that have not been paid much attention to.