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Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran)

Received: 29 March 2014     Accepted: 15 April 2014     Published: 30 April 2014
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Abstract

Sustainable development offers a new concept for the world economy in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing solely on income, sustainable development encourages cities, countries, and the world to focus simultaneously on three goals: economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Cities will be in the front lines of the battle for sustainable development. Not only do they face direct threats; they also have the best opportunities to identify and deliver solutions. As high-density, high-productivity settlements, cities can provide greater access to services of all kinds–including energy, water, health, education, finance, media, transport, recycling, and research – than can most rural areas. In this study first, ten indicators of Sustainable Development, some with positive relationship with sustainable development and some with negative relationship were chosen and information related to performances of 8 indices of 28 cities of Iran’s country in years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 extracted. After extracting indices and processing them, indices were standardized. In the next step and after standardizing, using McGranahan method, correlation matrix of indices was calculated by SPSS software and weight of each index was determined. After this step, weight of each index was multiplied on each standardized index and at the end composite index for each city was calculated for 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. Then, these composite indexes were sorted by descending. Stability numbers obtained using this method for Tehran for these years are 364, 369, 347 and 344 respectively, which was always higher than the average of 28 cities. Tehran’s rank was always between 4 and 9 showing undesirable performance which requires suitable actions.

Published in American Journal of Environmental Protection (Volume 3, Issue 2)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19
Page(s) 96-102
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2014. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Sustainable Development, Quantitative, Progress, McGranahan Method, Indicator

References
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[6] M.R. Poorjafar, Z. Khodaee, Geological indicators of sustainable urban development, National Conference on Contemporary Iranian Architecture and Urbanism, 15 pages, Beyza, 2010.
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[8] S. Afonja, “Gender, Culture and the Environment”, Paper presented at National Workshop on Nigerias Endangered Environment: Agenda for a New Millenum. Lagos 1999
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[10] S. Moreno Pires, T. Fidélis, T.B. Ramos, Measuring and comparing local sustainable development through common indicators: Constraints and achievements in practice, Cities, Volume 39, August 2014, Pages 1-9
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[13] L.M. Raak, Think Globally, Act Locally, and Plan Nationally An Evaluation of Sustainable Development in Indonesia at National, Regional, and Local Levels, Global Sustainable Communities Handbook, 2014, Pages 125-215
[14] L. Dvořáková, J. Zborková, Integration of Sustainable Development at Enterprise Level, Procedia Engineering, Volume 69, 2014, Pages 686-695.
[15] Susan Kinnear, Ian Ogden, Planning the innovation agenda for sustainable development in resource regions: A central Queensland case study, Resources Policy, Volume 39, March 2014, Pages 42-53.
[16] kh. Kalantari, Regional Planning and Development, Tehran, khoshbin press, 2002, p73.
[17] SH. Karami, GH. NabiBidhendi, H.R. Jafari, F. Pourasghare Sangachin, and A. Nejadi, Analysis and measuring seventh Goal Millennium development goals of selected countries by using composite indicators, the 3th International conference On Biological life sciences(ICBLS), Singapore, 2012.
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    Saeed Soleymani Sardu, Mohssen Torabi, Shahrbanoo Vafaei Varmazabadi. (2014). Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran). American Journal of Environmental Protection, 3(2), 96-102. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19

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    ACS Style

    Saeed Soleymani Sardu; Mohssen Torabi; Shahrbanoo Vafaei Varmazabadi. Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran). Am. J. Environ. Prot. 2014, 3(2), 96-102. doi: 10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19

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    AMA Style

    Saeed Soleymani Sardu, Mohssen Torabi, Shahrbanoo Vafaei Varmazabadi. Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran). Am J Environ Prot. 2014;3(2):96-102. doi: 10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19,
      author = {Saeed Soleymani Sardu and Mohssen Torabi and Shahrbanoo Vafaei Varmazabadi},
      title = {Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran)},
      journal = {American Journal of Environmental Protection},
      volume = {3},
      number = {2},
      pages = {96-102},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajep.20140302.19},
      abstract = {Sustainable development offers a new concept for the world economy in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing solely on income, sustainable development encourages cities, countries, and the world to focus simultaneously on three goals: economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Cities will be in the front lines of the battle for sustainable development. Not only do they face direct threats; they also have the best opportunities to identify and deliver solutions. As high-density, high-productivity settlements, cities can provide greater access to services of all kinds–including energy, water, health, education, finance, media, transport, recycling, and research – than can most rural areas. In this study first, ten indicators of Sustainable Development, some with positive relationship with sustainable development and some with negative relationship were chosen and information related to performances of 8 indices of 28 cities of Iran’s country in years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 extracted. After extracting indices and processing them, indices were standardized. In the next step and after standardizing, using McGranahan method, correlation matrix of indices was calculated by SPSS software and weight of each index was determined. After this step, weight of each index was multiplied on each standardized index and at the end composite index for each city was calculated for 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. Then, these composite indexes were sorted by descending. Stability numbers obtained using this method for Tehran for these years are 364, 369, 347 and 344 respectively, which was always higher than the average of 28 cities. Tehran’s rank was always between 4 and 9 showing undesirable performance which requires suitable actions.},
     year = {2014}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Measuring Progress toward Urban Sustainable Development Using a Quantitative Model (Case Study: Cities in Iran)
    AU  - Saeed Soleymani Sardu
    AU  - Mohssen Torabi
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    JF  - American Journal of Environmental Protection
    JO  - American Journal of Environmental Protection
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    EP  - 102
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
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    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajep.20140302.19
    AB  - Sustainable development offers a new concept for the world economy in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing solely on income, sustainable development encourages cities, countries, and the world to focus simultaneously on three goals: economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Cities will be in the front lines of the battle for sustainable development. Not only do they face direct threats; they also have the best opportunities to identify and deliver solutions. As high-density, high-productivity settlements, cities can provide greater access to services of all kinds–including energy, water, health, education, finance, media, transport, recycling, and research – than can most rural areas. In this study first, ten indicators of Sustainable Development, some with positive relationship with sustainable development and some with negative relationship were chosen and information related to performances of 8 indices of 28 cities of Iran’s country in years 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 extracted. After extracting indices and processing them, indices were standardized. In the next step and after standardizing, using McGranahan method, correlation matrix of indices was calculated by SPSS software and weight of each index was determined. After this step, weight of each index was multiplied on each standardized index and at the end composite index for each city was calculated for 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010. Then, these composite indexes were sorted by descending. Stability numbers obtained using this method for Tehran for these years are 364, 369, 347 and 344 respectively, which was always higher than the average of 28 cities. Tehran’s rank was always between 4 and 9 showing undesirable performance which requires suitable actions.
    VL  - 3
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Author Information
  • MSC in Regional Planinig, Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

  • MSc student in urban management, university of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

  • Undergraduate Student, Azad University, Karaj Branch, Karaj, Iran

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