مطالب

This article discusses the favorable benefits of the Jask-Mashhad motorway on the regeneration of the country's eastern half while providing a new plan for its construction. This freeway, with an estimated length of 1200 kilometers, a budget of around $2 billion, and a construction time of 8 years, has the potential to significantly alter the livelihood, economics, and population of the country's eastern half. This freeway, which links the landlocked northern countries with the neighboring countries of Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia, can handle 15-20 million passengers and tourists per year, as well as 15–25 million vehicles (cars, trailers, tankers, and trucks). It is especially critical for Shanghai Cooperation members. Presently, around 2 million people reside along the course of this highway; if the freeway is completed, this number would increase to more than 4 million. Furthermore, in the 25-year view (until 1424), this freeway will play a significant role in the north-south corridor, regeneration of ports on the Oman Sea's border, and achievement of sea axis development and land development. Transportation infrastructure is a critical component of population concentration and land improvement. Freeways are one of the most significant transportation facilities, providing rapid, safe, and inexpensive road access to all sections of the country, particularly for goods transit and tourism growth. A glance at the country's freeway map reveals that there are no freeways in the eastern half of the country, and none are planned for the future by the Ministry of Roads. This issue has made land access to the eastern provinces and the beaches of the Oman Sea problematic, and as a result, significant sections of Iran are unoccupied and underused.

Today, in all societies, the excessive consumption of energy and the concerns caused by its lack, especially for the future generations, are very important. In times of crisis, social capital can be used as one of the important components to solve problems and improve existing pro-cesses. Most important of these problems are the inappropriate way and lack of attention to optimal energy consumption in different dimensions. One of the prerequisites for correct and optimal consumption of energy is huge social capital. Unfortunately, some statistics show in-appropriate patterns of consumption of goods and energy in our country. The per capita con-sumption rate of Iranians is outside the standards of global and logical standards. Iranian peo-ple are consumer oriented in all areas of consumption, including food and energy, more than people in other parts of the world. The study of consumerism in new societies is of special im-portance because consumerism is not only a problem for consumers, but producers and dis-tributors of goods and services need to understand its characteristics. For this purpose, in so-cial sciences, sociologists, economists and contemporary policy makers analyze it comprehen-sively, and every expert pays attention to it from a specific angle. Modern consumerism is a social damage in an indiscriminate way that requires scientific knowledge and then basic treatment, or in other words, planning. In this article, first, the characteristics and definitions of social capital have been examined from the point of view of different experts, and its role in the optimization of energy consumption policies has been examined, and at the end, planning for the modification of consumption patterns has been discussed with an emphasis on strengthening social capital.