Analysis of Spatial Justice in Urban Services Provision in Iran

Extended Abstract
Introduction
There have been numerous and varied studies of public land distribution, spatial distribution of urban services, and overall urban spatial justice in cities across the country. But due to the lack of spatial integrity and the lack of procedural and content integration in the way they have been done, no accurate and credible picture of the status of spatial justice in the delivery of municipal services at national level has been achieved so far.
The main purpose of this article is to present a clear and relatively comprehensive picture of the resultant of spatial justice research results by examining the content and method of writing research in this field in the country. In the other words, this article seeks to find an answer to the question of what is the status of spatial justice in public services in Iran, based on the analysis of a series of internal researches published in scientific-research journals. This article intends to explain the answer to this question through the analysis of framework, theoretical approaches, methodology, statistical community, variables, indices, tools used and the results obtained in the mentioned research, in framework of meta-analysis methodology.
Methodology
This article is a developmental one and is generally conducted in the framework of meta-analysis method using quantitative content analysis technique in decomposition research samples. For this purpose, 31 journals were considered as the statistical population of the journals after the census of journals related to the fields of geography and urban development with the scientific-research degree indexed in the ISC. Then, using the opinion of experts and academics related to the subject, 13 journals were selected as sample volumes. The same process was undertaken in the selecting and studying papers in selected journals and among the 28 papers in the field of spatial justice published between 2006 and 2016, then using the opinion of experts 16 papers were selected as the final samples for the review. Then, 16 selected papers were analyzed and coded with using the article analysis framework. Also, in order to guarantee the validity of content analysis, the data obtained were used in the context of another method called meta-analysis. The test-retest technique was also used to ensure the reliability of the content analysis. The selected papers were coded once according to the considered decomposition pattern and coding structure, and in the second time after 2 week, the same papers were coded again based on the same decomposition pattern and coding structure.
Results and discussion
In all papers, 2 and more than 2 researchers and in more than two-thirds of the papers, 3 researchers have done the research. The summary of the year of publication of papers also shows an increase in the number of articles in the field of spatial justice from 2010 onwards.
Although half of the papers did not specify the type of research in the methodology, but, the majority of the papers were of the applied type and all of which aim to provide a simultaneous description and analysis of spatial justice in a particular spatial region.
81% of the papers did not have a clear question, and about two-thirds of them lacked a clear hypothesis and just mentioned the purpose of the paper. In the Index of Framework for Analysis, less than one-third of the papers stated the existence of a framework and structure for their analysis.
Although the target population in spatial justice surveys is a designated territorial unit of the specified spatial range, however, 56% of the papers did not mention the target population.
Half of the making indexes lack a clear basis, and a quarter of them are land use based. Also, nearly 70% of the papers did not use a specific component to compile the index.
Correlation of 6 variables with urban services variables was evaluated, in which half of the papers evaluated the relationship between population distribution and service distribution. Also, the independence or dependence of the variable distribution of utilities in 56% of the papers was unclear.
In the 2 elements of population distribution and per capita services in the 12 cities surveyed, 5 were unbalanced and 1 was balanced. Six cities have not commented on the status of this element.
Conclusion
In response to the main research question that is based on the analysis of the resultant of the published internal research set, what is the status of spatial justice in urban services in Iran, all the findings of the research show that the Iranian cities with obvious spatial imbalance encountered, cannot be cited.
Lack of comprehensiveness in measuring all elements of spatial justice, lack of up-to-date elements study in this field, lack of qualitative research methods, lack of unique creativity and unique operation in the preparation and setting of papers, and a constant imitation framework of most of them, and ultimately lack of comparative studies on the comparison of urban spatial justice in Iranian cities and other cities around the world, have mattress on the results of urban spatial justice research in Iran.
Therefore, in order to improve the prosperity of future researches in the field of urban spatial justice in the country, firstly, it is suggested to structure the dimensions, components, criteria and indicators of spatial justice measurement in both quantitative and qualitative areas as the basis of the research, to be studied in depth and lead to new models being presented by researchers interested in the field of spatial justice. In the second place, it is suggested that comparative studies with other cities around the world on the measurement of spatial justice be particularly emphasized by researchers in the methodological and way of analyzing and combining data and information.
Keywords: Spatial Justice, Urban, Content Analysis, Meta-Analysis, Iran