Sustainability In Urban Neighborhoods, A Comparative Study

The article explains the concept of sustainability and investigates its appliance in two neighborhoods of Tehran. Features such as identity, vitality, access, diversity, providing services and security are evaluated in two neighborhoods of Tehran. First one is Narmak which is the product of planning and design of contemporary urban planners (French experts in 1960 decade), and the second is Ghanat Kosar neighborhood which has grown without planning. Method of research is a statistical analysis of questionnaires based on indicators of sustainability, and field observations are used too. By Cronbach’s Alpha the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument (questionnaire) were evaluated. Then for expressing the difference between sustainability of two neighborhoods, Mann-Whitney U test was used. According to the results of this study, Narmak neighborhood can be considered as a more sustainable neighborhood, which is in accordance with the principles and criteria of sustainability. Physical features such as green spaces and squares, desirable urban landscape, beside various activities, lead to vitality and the residents’ feeling that they belong to their neighborhood makes Narmak a neighborhood with identity. To reach sustainability measures in the second neighborhood changes should be done. The most important point is that, although the neighborhood of Narmak has sustainability principles, but carrying capacity of neighborhood is close to saturation. Therefore increasing building density and population which is inevitable in Tehran due to its growing rate, would imbalance the quality of life and degree of sustainability in this neighborhood very soon.