Spatial Analysis of the Relationship between Quality of Urban Environment and Social Capital (Case Study: Quarters of Yazd City)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran

2 M.A. in Geography and Urban Planning, University of Yazd, Yazd, Iran

Abstract

Introduction
Looking anatomical- functional planning to various aspects of life in the past has caused in the late 1960s. It was influenced by the needs and knowledge of new modern social concepts such as social welfare, quality of life and social justice in the realm of planning and public outreach programs. It is essential to apply development of these concepts in order to achieve quality standards in the utility of urban environmental quality, involving environmental, cultural, social and psychological asspects. Quality of the urban environment, as aspects of quality of life, includes a sense of luxury, comfort and the satisfaction of physical factors in spatial and social economic, environmental and symbolic of their living environment.
On the other hand, today beside the human capital, physical and financial capital, another capital with the name of social capital has used. Links to this concept refers to communication between members of a network as a valuable of source that they can create norms and reciprocal trust to member's goal realization. The social capital is a great option for optimization of human and physical capital and it’s a way for success. At the most general level of social capital, community or social group features increase the capacity of community and voluntary organization to solve mutual problems or general issues.
Following the increase in urbanization and high-speed changes in the context of urban studies in Iran, environmental quality in urban areas has declined sharply. Another part of social capital as the relations influenced by factor is focused as a lost chain of urban planning and designs. Given the conceptual definition of social capital, fortification of its urban spaces is possible only with changes to improve urban space quality. Urban spaces are a tool for urban designers to improve and organize the environment and they have the ability to provide the necessary substrates for the formation and promotion of the social capital. In other words, points with higher degree of environmental quality have suitable substrates for the formation of social interactions and will have a higher social capital.
This research is a case study in Yazd city located in Yazd province. Therefore, this study sought to identify factors, elements and indicators of the quality of urban environment and social capital and finally assess the relationship between these two concepts in  Yazd. What the relationship is there between the proportion of urban environmental quality and social capital?
 
Methodology
This research has a descriptive– analytic method and in order to analyze data collected from questionnaire and field survey we used two methods of descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation Test, Analysis Of Variance and multiple regressions) in SPSS software.
 
Results and Discussion
Quality of the urban environment is an aspect of quality of life that includes a sense of luxury, comfort and the satisfaction of physical factors-spatial and social- economic- environmental and symbolic of their living environment. In other words, the quality of environment not only is related to field of the material needs of man but also provide social and community development that affect the social behavior patterns. Urban environment quality indicators used in this study are consisted of environmental, social, and physical function and anatomically is taken into consideration. Based on the average amount of social capital in the community studies, the highest average of social capital in neighborhood is pleasure and the lowest average neighborhood of Safaei indicates that there is inverse relationship between all areas of urban environmental quality and social capital. Because there are firm relationships between social capital and urban environment quality with the planning in the sectors that social capital and environment quality is low, increase the quality of these cases in sectors.
 
Conclusions
In sum, social capital is the set of relationships between individual characteristics such as partnership, trust, social cohesion, and safety study that examines the relationship between social capital and environmental quality in the city of Yazd. It has the results and observations in the areas under study. It was indicated that there is an inverse relationship between social capital and environmental quality. This means social capital increases in the level of environmental quality is diminished that this field studies and surveys in the neighborhood was confirmed. The rugged interpersonal relationships, communication and trust rates are significantly higher that are redolent linked to social capital. In other words, environment quality is impressible from state organizations more than people that live in garter. That means despite high social capital in the bottom areas, there is not good attention of government and environmental quality are low. These areas are suffering from unlikelihood.Meanwhile uptown neighborhoods with low social capital due to the special attention of organizations had relatively good quality of the environment.

Keywords

Main Subjects


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