Mashhad

Experiences from urban development plans and assessments of their concrete and tangible results in the past decades indicate lack of adequate success of our urbanization system to responding needs of our citizens. This has resulted in need to find a fundamental solution to transforming the centralized system into decentralized. Recent changes in regard to a change of approach from master plan to strategic planning has resulted in an increased sensitivity with regard to enhancement of urban management in addition to the opinion that strategic planning is not in itself a credible replacement for technocratic master planning (top-down) and is not on its own sufficient for sustainable development. In this article, we employ methods of actualization and content analysis to compare the common features of two issues in Iran and subsequently, with an emphasis on correction of structure of urban management system, the concepts of participation of citizens, government, private sector and civic society and enhancement of “good urban governance” with “strategic planning approach” are discussed as keys to the question of solid development.“Public participation in decision-making, accountability, equity and efficiency”, defines both fundamental principles of good urban governance and characteristics of strategic planning and is essentials of a constant environmental, social and economic development.

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.

Network of public spaces composes of a network of interconnected land use and various elements of the city, such as synthetic and natural which shows the city as a whole. Network structure of public spaces is important because understanding this network as a structure presents us the formation of the city. This paper attempts to define the status of the network of public spaces in the city structure and to accomplish goals which leads to integration, interconnectedness and cohesion of public space network. For this purpose, a descriptive-analytic method was used and the standards and design principles were taken from the literature review. For collecting the data, Moalem Boulevard in Mashhad/Iran was investigated and analyzed with respect to the physical, functional, visual, social, and historical dimensions of public spaces. Finally, three conceptual options such as a linear pattern, a centralized pattern and a distribution pattern were presented. The results show the factors, criteria, characteristics, urban design framework, policies and strategies to integrate the structure of public spaces network in the area under investigation.

Purpose - Today, tourism is mentioned as a suitable approach for socio-economic and physical development in rural areas. Therefore, rural areas have capabilities and potentials in terms of tourist attractions; however, not all areas have the same capabilities for development. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ecological potential of the study area and to find the relationship and alignment between tourism capacity and ecological potential in rural areas of Mashhad tourism sphere of influence. Design/methodology/approach - The present theoretical study was conducted with applied purposes using the descriptive-analytical method. GIS and SPSS software and CoCoSo multi-criteria decision-making model were used to analyze the data. Findings- According to research findings the most influential indicator was the distance to tourism water resources and the least influential indicator was the distance to fault. Therefore, the highest ecological potential belongs to the foothill villages of the study area. Also, in terms of tourism capacity, the most effective factors have been the natural attractions of the village and its suburbs and the quality of village road. Original/value - On this basis, the highest tourism potentials belong to villages of Pivehzhan, Virani, and Radkan, respectively. According to the results of the study there is a significant positive relationship between ecological potential of the studied villages and their tourism capacity and there is no relationship between the number of tourists and ecological potential of the studied villages.