Characterisation of social sustainability in a decayed urban block in Iran (a case study of: Saheb Al-Amri neighbourhood of Ghasr-Dasht, Shiraz)

ABSTRACT

Social sustainability has a crucial role in sustainable urban development. Neglecting social factors of sustainability in the development process will cause inadequacy in neighbourhood and cities. Despite the significance of social sustainability, there are still uncertainties in definition, criteria and measurement system of it until now. Saheb Al-Amri neighbourhood of Ghasr-Dasht district is a developing neighbourhood in Shiraz city, which involves several problems associated with its decayed urban grid. The first objective of this paper is to discuss the social sustainability definitions, through reviewing the existing literature. The second objective is to evaluate whether Saheb Al-Amri neighbourhood is socially sustainable. The third objective is to develop a more detailed guideline for measuring a neighbourhood's sustainability and addressing its shortcomings. A total of 333 residents of this neighbourhood were selected randomly based on the Cochran's sample size formula, and they were asked to respond to a questionnaire in order to reach a framework to improve the indicators of social sustainability. The quantitative results from the questionnaire analysis revealed that the indicator of “Improving welfare and Quality of life” with the mean of 2.7out of 3 was the most satisfactory indicator, while the indicator of “Participation and Social interaction” with the mean of 1.81 out of 3 was the least satisfactory indicator comparing with the other indicators. In addition, just 16.2% of local inhabitants in the Saheb-AL-Amri neighbourhood were satisfied with social sustainability criteria, whereas 83.8% were neutral. The neighbourhood requires more improvement to be socially sustainable.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development
• social criteria
• sustainability indicators
• residential environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).