Informal settlements

Although in most of the rural development plans, relocation of informal settlements is often considered as an efficient solution to increase safety of rural communities against natural and man-made disasters, such as, earthquakes, fire hazards, floods, etc. an evaluation of recent experiences in the relocation projects show that the relocated community is often unsatisfied with the new residential areas. In most cases, the new residential areas are advantageous in compare to the informal settlements in terms of utility infrastructures and architecture design but the public remain reluctant to migrate to the new place. This paper, tries to evaluate the role of Community participation in the process of informal settlements relocation projects in Kerman province, an Iranian south-eastern state, by measuring people's evaluation of their own participation in the process of decision-making during five key relocation phases, namely, choice of new location, methods of relocation, architectural design of the new areas, construction procedures and supervision on the whole project. Questionnaire survey was employed to gather these data and was followed by statistical analysis (by SPSS software) in order to approve meaningful relationships. The results showed that lack of community participation had been responsible for a number of uninhabited settlement projects and some unfinished construction projects during the whole relocation process.

Banberz, Banbor, and Sabziabad neighborhoods are three residential districts on the periphery of Ilam city, and are facing a lot of problems namely social, economic, and physical, particularly in housing sector including low quality, poor housing, limited-quantity housing. In order to assess the sustainability of housing, 75 indicators and to rank districts, SPSS software (exploratory factor analysis) is used. On the basis of economic, social, educational, health, and environmental services and culture three districts (Banbarz, Banboor, Sabziabad) were selected as marginal neighborhood. Most houses, have been built away from without permission and building permits and engineering control in small scale measures. According to statistical models; most of household economic statuses are below the poverty line. According to the findings of the questionnaire, fabric and physical feature, type of building, materials applied, quality of building and density of residential units of most units out of any control and without engineering standards in small-scale piece of land, were built without a permit and building permit. Given the statistical models, the economic status of households indicate that more than 70 percent of them live below the poverty line.

The aim of this paper is investigating the impacts of residents empowering in physical and environmental improvements in informal settlements. This place has some problems such as safety, health and environmental that Managers and municipal authorities should take action to fix them. In this regard The NGOs as an intermediary between the people and town officials could have a significant role in solving these problems by the participation of residents."Hamyaran" private institution as a N.G.O. organization decide to implement a project with a partnership approach to empower there that called "Sustainable Development Plan in Informal Settlements”. This project is one of four design pattern in the institution which is trying to create safe and sustainable spaces with using public participation and local authorities in a decentralizing approach and an institutional development. Methodology of this research is descriptive – analytical. Objectives were questioned by questionnaire from people. Although the project for reasons such as changing in government policies and local authorities did not achieve all of goals, But succeeded in reducing crime rates in urban areas through the creation of attractive spaces, organizing urban centers and creating local institutions. The strategies employed in this neighborhood have the ability to refer to similar samples in Metropolises of Asia.

Today, tourism has become a highly successful and profitable industry in the world, especially in developed countries. Hamadan province in Iran has a lot of tourist attractions. According to statistics released by the Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization in the province, there are over 1831 historical and cultural recorded works in Hamedan province. Therefore, by investing in the tourism sector, the province can be turned into a tourist destination, helping to create jobs and increase people's income. This research is an applied one, conducted by field and observation methods. Thus, tourism can be considered as a rescue tool for sustainable urban development, especially in marginalized areas. In this research, the effect of tourism industry on decreasing housing unsustainability will be studied in one of Hamedan's marginal neighborhoods, Manoochehri neighborhood, emphasizing on sustainability components. Using a researcher-made questionnaire, the researcher analyzed the extent of each of the components to answer the research questions and, through the SWOT table, identified the strategy of intervention in the neighborhood to reduce the incidence of unsustainability and, in the end, considering the strategy and the results of the questionnaire, it has come up with the necessary strategies.

Today, tourism has become a highly successful and profitable industry in the world, especially in developed countries. Hamadan province in Iran has a lot of tourist attractions. According to statistics released by the Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization in the province, there are over 1831 historical and cultural recorded works in Hamedan province. Therefore, by investing in the tourism sector, the province can be turned into a tourist destination, helping to create jobs and increase people's income. This research is an applied one, conducted by field and observation methods. Thus, tourism can be considered as a rescue tool for sustainable urban development, especially in marginalized areas. In this research, the effect of tourism industry on decreasing housing unsustainability will be studied in one of Hamedan's marginal neighborhoods, Manoochehri neighborhood, emphasizing on sustainability components. Using a researcher-made questionnaire, the researcher analyzed the extent of each of the components to answer the research questions and, through the SWOT table, identified the strategy of intervention in the neighborhood to reduce the incidence of unsustainability and, in the end, considering the strategy and the results of the questionnaire, it has come up with the necessary strategies.

INTRODUCTION: In order to increase the capacity to deal with earthquake hazards, increasing urban resilience has become a basic priority for most governments. Based on this, the current research was written with the aim of measuring the physical resilience of the peripheral part of the 20th district of Tehran against earthquakes. METHODS: The research method is applied in terms of purpose and analytical-exploratory in nature, which was used to analyze information using the AHP technique in Expert Choice software and the opinion of 25 experts. FINDINGS: The findings showed that district 20 of Tehran city will face a serious crisis due to having many worn-out and marginalized structures, short-term residential units, old buildings, high population density, small area of residential land and narrow roads. CONCLUSION: According to the obtained results, about 47% of the fabric of district 20 is highly vulnerable to the earthquake crisis. Therefore, appropriate policymaking to manage earthquake crisis, especially in strengthening buildings and land use planning in this area, is an inevitable necessity.