نشریه مطالعات ساختار و کارکرد شهری
پیاپی 36 (پاییز 1402)

Small towns are considered important components of any urban system; therefore, studying the function and role of these towns in regional planning and development is essential. The intermediary function of these towns between urban and rural settlements and their provision of services at the local level have made them strategic elements in the balanced development of an urban system. The urban system of Fars province has been faced with two phenomena in the last few decades: a sharp increase in the number of small towns and the phenomenon of urban primacy. Considering the great connection between the small towns of the central district of Fars province and the metropolis of Shiraz and the mutual functional effects, it is necessary to identify the factors affecting the functioning of the small towns in this area to improve its urban system. This research is descriptive-analytical in nature and applied in purpose. Documentary studies and research background as well as experts' opinions were used to identify and extract the factors affecting the functioning of these cities. Finally, 37 factors in economic, infrastructure, social, management and planning, and environmental dimensions were identified using environmental scanning and localization, and then a questionnaire in the form of a 37x37 matrix was prepared and completed by 17 experts. The collected data were analyzed using the cross impacts analysis method as one of the future study methods and utilizing the MICMAC software. The results show that the identified factors are effective in the functioning of small towns in this region in an unstable situation. Among the 37 factors identified, 15 of them, which are mainly economic, are key to the future of small towns' functioning in the urban system of the studied area.

This research focuses on the evaluation of the improvement of urban tissues with a crisis management approach with a standard criterion to reduce vulnerability and improve the standard of living in dilapidated tissues. Therefore, the importance of this research is to extract and localize crisis management indicators for the city of Mallard, which is located in Mallard City, the west of Tehran, and integrate them with the concepts of regeneration and worn-out fabric, so that effective solutions can be provided for the sustainable improvement of the worn-out fabric. It should be noted that Mallard City was upgraded from Shahryar City to an independent city in 2008. The population of Mallard has been declared as 281,016 people based on the population of 1395, and it is considered one of the most populated cities around Tehran. In terms of innovation, various studies have been stated about the dimensions, components, and indicators in crisis management, each of which has been considered and addressed crisis management from a specific point of view, with the aim of improving the worn-out fabric. However, no research combines the approaches of crisis management and the reconstruction of worn-out fabric. Therefore, this research can be considered innovative and its findings and outputs are useful. The purpose of this research is to formulate a framework for combining approaches related to crisis management, including regeneration, and providing practical and effective solutions for improving the worn-out fabric of Mallard, as well as providing a model in the field of comprehensive regeneration in combination with other approaches for the cities of the country. This study is applied in terms of purpose and discovery-based descriptive-analytical in terms of its nature and method. The method and tools of data collection are documentary and survey. Documentary data, including related articles, theses, books, study plans of Mallard urban development, statistics center data, and municipal data, as well as field observation and survey methods were used to collect data related to the research subject. Interviews and questionnaires were conducted to explain how to combine the approach of crisis management and urban regeneration to improve the dilapidated fabric in Mallard City. Factor analysis was used to analyze the research data. The analysis of various factors revealed that based on the state of the worn-out fabric of Mallard City and the respondents’ views, the effect of the factors has been determined in the order of health-medical, sports-recreational, security, educational, municipal (common), cultural, and economic services and the regeneration of worn-out Mallard tissues due to the existence of obstacles and problems in the implementation of plans or the increase of their time frame has caused that the goals of the existing plans from the perspective of development, especially spatial and physical, have not been implemented regularly, and there is a need to continue management and planning activities in various conditions and face threats and limitations and remove obstacles through the development of management capacities in the field of worn-out fabric.

Urban areas have become grounds for many natural disasters and are highly vulnerable to them. Therefore, the urban managers’ and planners’ main task is to protect people from these natural disasters. Today, resilience is widely used in natural disaster management. Based on this concept, different societies examine ways to strengthen and improve their power against natural disasters. As a result, it is necessary to study various aspects of resilience in urban areas. The present study aims to evaluate the urban environment’s resilience against natural hazards, especially earthquakes, in Masjed Soleyman. This study employed a theoretical-applied research design based on the descriptive-analytical method. The data were collected via a combination of library techniques and field research (a researcher-made questionnaire). The criteria’ relative weights were calculated using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Buckley’s fuzzy weights of the selected criteria. As the results depicted, the variables affecting the urban environment’s resilience against natural hazards (especially earthquakes) in Masjed Soleyman City are building skeleton, type of materials, number of floors, age of the building, building quality, number of units, and width of passages. Most of the areas of Masjed Soleyman City are not resistant to earthquakes or have low resilience. Based on the seven studied indicators, the city does not have a favorable situation in terms of resilience to earthquakes and more than half of the city area (56.25%) has unfavorable resilience. The order of the effect of the urban environment resilience components of Masjed Soleyman against earthquakes, based on their weights, is the number of units, number of floors, the width of passages, age of the building, quality of the building, structure of the building, and type of materials.

The heat island is considered an important variable in climate and environmental studies. Today, population growth and urbanization are one of the factors that increase the air temperature in urban areas, which causes the creation of a heat island in these areas compared to the surrounding environment, whose effects can play a fundamental role in air quality and consequently public health. Therefore, in this research, the spatial and temporal changes of the thermal islands of Maragheh City during the periods of 1984, 1994, and 2020 have been investigated using Landsat satellite data. The results of the relationship between temperature and vegetation show that in 1986, the highest average temperature in the area without vegetation was 34.74 degrees Celsius and the lowest temperature in the dense vegetation area was 25.11 degrees Celsius. In 2020, the highest average temperature for the area without vegetation was 35.15 degrees Celsius and the lowest temperature for the dense vegetation area was 28.70 degrees Celsius. Also, the spatial autocorrelation index shows that the heat islands of the city had a cluster pattern at the 99% confidence level in all periods. Moreover, the results obtained from hotspots reveal that hot spots were located in the center, southeast, and northwest of the city, and cold spots were located in the south and north of the city at a confidence level of 99%.

Today, the use of the GPS global positioning system for intra- and extra-urban transportation is a necessary and undeniable matter. Assessing the reliability and stability of intra-city bus routes has been raised as an important issue that has a great impact on the quality of bus services. In this research, the GPS global positioning system data, which is related to the Yazd City bus system, was used to evaluate the reliability and stability of city buses for intra-city transfers. One of the goals investigated in this research is to examine the parameters affecting bus bunching and analyze the stability of the system as well as the reliability of the public transportation system. In this research, section travel time, dwell time, headway, and bus bunching have been analyzed in terms of time and place. In fact, it is checked how the situation of batch movement occurrence and stability is at different times of the day. In this research, the prediction methods of Linear Regression, Support Vector Regression, Random Forest, and Gradient Boosting Regression were used to predict the reliability and stability assessment of bus travel routes. The Gradient Boosting Regression Model had a lower error and better performance for predicting the reliability of the bus travel route and headway than the rest of the prediction models. The results of this research help urban planners understand the stability of stations, identify key points that affect the stability of stations, identify key stations, and provide better transportation services in the future to reduce the waiting time of passengers.

Nowadays, the intelligent use of technology as an efficient strategy to improve environmental quality, especially in the cities of advanced countries, is on the agenda. In this process, measuring the current situation is considered the first step towards using technology to improve environmental quality. However, the problem is that such a measurement has not been done in the Ahvaz metropolis. Therefore, the aim of the research is to measure the current situation of the Ahvaz metropolis in terms of using technology to improve environmental quality. This research is an applied-developmental problem-oriented study that follows an exploratory approach by using the document library and survey data collection methods. The Kolmograph-Smirnoff, Shapiro-Wilk, TT sample, and Friedman ranking tests were used for analyzing the data. The survey tool was a 5-point Likert questionnaire, whose final content validity and reliability were confirmed by the professors' opinion and Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.893, respectively. The statistical community of the research consisted of experts. The sampling method was a two-stage cluster, through which 142 samples of academic experts were selected. Considering that the number of the statistical population is not known, this sample size is sufficient according to Rasko's rules. Based on the findings of the research, following a passive and deterministic attitude, which is under the influence of centralist policies in the framework of the center-periphery system and the political economy based on oil rent, has caused not only the use of technology in this metropolis not be done to improve the quality environmental protection, but it has also created many problems in Ahvaz metropolis, especially environmental problems. In the end, some solutions were suggested based on the research findings.

Following the rapid growth of the urban population in recent decades, the desire for vitality has become one of the most important needs in metropolitan areas. The lack of vitality in urban environments causes these spaces to become soulless, which can have a significant impact on inhabitants' sense of security. The present study aimed to determine the vitality of the Bensanjan district of Yasuj, as well as its significance on people's sense of security. Security, socio-cultural, economic, environmental, and physical factors were utilized for this goal. The study followed a descriptive-analytical approach and the data were gathered through library study and field research, with a sample size of 384 participants calculated using Cochran's method. The one-sample t-test was utilized to assess satisfaction with vitality components. In addition, the influence of each of the research indicators on the degree of vitality satisfaction was investigated using simple linear regression and Pearson correlation tests. Furthermore, the influence of vitality on residents' perception of security, as well as the relationship between vitality in the Bensanjan district and inhabitants' sense of security, were investigated using simple linear regression and Pearson correlation tests. The t-test findings reveal that the vitality rate in the Bensanjan district is low. According to the sequential regression test, a significant relationship exists between district vitality and each of the research measures. According to the correlation test, the existing status of vitality indicators has not been able to increase inhabitants' sense of security. The simple linear regression test also revealed that the vitality variable influences the district’s perception of security.

According to the forecasts of the World Health Organization, in the future, there will be a growth in the elderly population, which requires planning and policies. The process of changing the age structure of the population will lead to the phenomenon of aging in societies. In this regard, planning for the body and structure of the city without considering the changing demographic structure in the future will definitely fail. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate the changes in the age structure of the population of Tabriz city, emphasizing the health services and its forecast until 2051. This research follows a descriptive-correlational approach and is a survey in terms of the method of data collection. The population of the present study is 68821 patients who were presented by Tabriz hospitals. First, the demographic data of the two decades of 2006 to 2016 were used as the basis for population forecasting, and then for analyzing the data, the dynamic systems-based approach was used to assess the need for medical services up to 1430 with a systemic view. The results of the research showed that by 2051, a total of 4948 hospital beds and 2418 nurses should be added to bring Tabriz to a normal state compared to the current conditions of the city. Predictions show that the problem of the aging population will undoubtedly affect the health care system of Tabriz city, and to provide medical services for the elderly population in the next 30 years, medical facilities must be increased significantly, and this requires comprehensive planning.

The challenges to citizens' health can be counted among the most important ones of urbanization in the 21st century. Since cities have always been one of the key and powerful determinants of people's health, investigating the relationship between the characteristics of the urban built environment and people's health has been the focus of research in recent decades. The review of the research background showed that most of these studies were conducted in the cities of developed countries and the number of studies related to the cities of developing countries is limited. Based on this, the aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the urban built environment and mental health in Iran, one of the developing countries. The city of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran, was selected as the study area. The research is cross-sectional and case study, which follows a descriptive-analytical approach. Land use characteristics, population density, and distance (walking distance) to service destinations are independent variables and mental health is the dependent variable of the research. Based on the results, no significant relationship between land use diversity and mental health was observed. The relationship between commercial land use per capita, green space per capita, net population density, gross population density, and distance (walking distance) to service destinations with mental health is significant and negative. The results showed that the six variables of distance (walking distance) to the grocery and fruit shop, commercial and green space per capita, and gross and net residential density explained 23.1% of the changes in mental health. The results of the path analysis showed that the green space per capita has the most direct effect, and the gross population density has the most indirect and total effects on people's mental health. Considering the lack of similar experimental research in Iranian cities and even other developing countries, it is necessary to conduct more empirical research, especially in the cities of Iran.

The sustainability of the environment and the quality of the urban environment is one of the issues that have received the attention of researchers because it is seriously related to the residents’ lives. The purpose of this research is to evaluate and prioritize environmental sustainability in the urban areas of Hamadan. First, eight neighborhoods were selected by cluster sampling and then by simple random sampling, the households living in these neighborhoods were selected as subjects. The sample size using Cochran's method was equal to 368 people. The instrument for measuring environmental sustainability included 12 criteria and 71 items. Data analysis was done using SPSS and GIS software. The 12 main criteria were used for the environmental sustainability of localities. The level of attention and importance of the sub-criteria was determined according to the residents' questionnaire. Using AHP and ANP methods, the importance of the criteria was determined and based on that criteria, quality of place, annoyance caused by traffic volume, environmental challenges, and protective measures of water consumption were considered the four important criteria. According to the analysis of the T single-sample, it was found that the indicators of water consumption protection measures, satisfaction with the mobility and accessibility index, annoyance caused by the volume of traffic, dissatisfaction with noise, and environmental challenges in Hamedan city are not favorable. Hamedan neighborhood sustainability map was prepared based on the criteria used, AHP and ANP methods, and GIS analysis. Findings revealed that Hamadan City is not very stable in terms of sustainability. The results also demonstrated that by using both methods, stable and unstable neighborhoods are the same (in some cases, there is a difference in rank), which shows that Hamadan city is not very stable in terms of sustainability, because the distance between stable and unstable neighborhoods is large. Eram Boulevard and Eram Bostan neighborhoods had the highest stability while Qalani and Chaparkhaneh neighborhoods had the lowest stability.