A comparative study of the effectiveness of the production of riding and walking space on the quality of the urban environment (Case: 22 Districts of Tehran city)

Subject Areas : Urban planning

Alireza Ahmadi ¹ , hamidreza rostamkhani ² , mohamad taghi heydari ³

1 - Master student of geography and urban planning, university of zanjan, zanjan
2 - Master's Degree, Urban Design, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan Branch, Zanjan, Iran
3 - associate professor, department of Geography and urban planning, Zanjan University, Zanjan, Iran

Received: 2022-10-26 Accepted : 2023-01-06 Published : 2023-01-21

Keywords: Environmental quality, environment, Space Production, Tehran City,

Abstract :

      Tehran metropolis has faced many environmental pollutions in recent decades and its quality has been affected.This situation has been paralleled by the ever-increasing population and, as a result, the significant increase in the reliance on motor vehicles for intra and extra-urban trips in this metropolis.  The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental quality of Tehran and its spatial relevance to transportation variables. This research has been done by quantative method and using the data of the statistical yearbook of Tehran province in 2019. Shannon entropy weighting method and Promethee multi-criteria decision making technique for evaluating and ranking Tehran regions in terms of environmental quality, hierarchical clustering in SPSS environment for clustering 22 regions and bivariate Moran autocorrelation analysis in Geoda software to study spatial coherence And environmental quality quotes are used. The results indicate the existence of major spatial differences between different regions of Tehran in terms of environmental quality and regions are divided into four major clusters. Positive and negative relationships between transport variables and environmental quality were observed in the form of different spatial patterns in the regions and spatial clusters and non-clusters were analyzed. The results showed that the production of riding space and the increase in travel production, under the influence of artificial road construction in the second cycle of capital accumulation and Fordism mass production style, has a negative spatial correlation with the quality of the urban environment.Extended AbstractIntroduction:      In this research, in particular, the impact of riding transportation with motorized vehicles (according to trip production and absorption statistics) and walking on the urban environment is discussed. Recently, (Dutta et al, 2013: 49) has emphasized the relationship between the quality of the urban environment and the physical, social and economic conditions of the city. In the sense that it is not acceptable to issue a general and universal ruling regarding the relationship between the city and the environment; Rather, regional differences should be considered and the local conditions of cities should be considered in this regard. One of the most obvious indicators of today's urbanization is the increase in reliance on passenger transportation with motor vehicles. Such an unplanned increase brings with it negative environmental impacts, and yet, one of the environmental impacts of urban transportation that is easily seen in developing countries and unfortunately usually ignored is the pedestrian/vehicle conflict. )Huzayyin & Ashour, 2004: 4). In fact, the methodical evaluation of the effect of the type of transportation on the quality of the urban environment will be a suitable and useful tool for thinking about alternative transportation methods. On the other hand, considering the prominent role of transportation use in the body and consequently the social dimension of the city, the decision regarding it will subsequently face the city with obvious physical and social changes, and considering the heavy costs of the physical and social changes of the city, It is appropriate to explain the effect of different types of transportation on the quality of the city's environment.Tehran is one of the metropolises of Iran that suffers from extensive environmental issues. The pressure on the ecological resources and on the natural resources of the city and region of Tehran, which has been under the direct influence of the driving force of rapid urbanization and comes from the increase in the volume of urban trips, the upward trend of waste production, runoff, etc., is noticeable (Shahi et al. , 2018) Therefore, it is felt necessary to use a planning thinking in order to solve and adjust this problem. This research tries to explain part of the environmental problems of Tehran city by focusing on the transportation variable and offers suggestions to improve its situation. We would like to say that without planning and methodical monitoring of the current structure of the city, presenting any kind of program to improve its environmental condition will be fruitless; Because in this case, we have forgotten the problem-producing points that constantly challenge the urban environment. Identifying these issues and what is behind them will be the first step and prerequisite for any plan and action. A review of the theoretical background of the research shows that the utilitarian perspective in dealing with space and including the environment thinks about maximum exploitation and capital accumulation. During the production of artificial space, during the second cycle of capital accumulation, in which, according to Harvey, large-scale industrial production is replaced by daily and mass light industrial goods (Aghaei, 2020), the emergence of Fordism leads to the production and consumption of riding spaces, and production and consumption becomes one and expands day by day. The antithesis point of this current is formed by two currents: with the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his subject-body view and the view of this same Hegelian, Cartesian dualism is questioned. The results of this case are also revealed in urban planning, which in this research has been shown in the form of a comparison of the production of travel from the examples of the production of riding space with pedestrian circulation.Methodology:        This research is one of the quantitative studies with a practical aspect. The research data were taken from the statistical yearbook of Tehran province. The general process of the research has been that after extracting environmental quality assessment indicators from previous researches, the data were weighted in the form of research indicators, using the Shannon entropy method. Then, in order to evaluate and rank the 22 districts of Tehran from the perspective of environmental quality indicators, the Prometheus multi-criteria decision-making method was used in the Visual Promethee software environment. In the next step, to investigate the spatial relationship of transportation variables with the environmental quality of the regions, two-variable Moran autocorrelation analysis LISA and Geoda software with ESDA approach were used and the type of relationship, the type of clusters and their significance were determined.Results and discussion:      The evaluation of the environmental quality of the 22 districts of Tehran shows that there are many differences in terms of the quality of the environment in the regions. Meanwhile, region 22 has the best environmental quality and region 7 has the worst quality. The quality of the rest of the regions is between these two regions. In general, the areas of the city can be classified into 4 different clusters based on the quality of the environment, and it can be said that the neighboring areas have almost the same quality. The results of spatial correlation analysis of travel production and absorption with environmental quality show that there is a negative spatial relationship between these two variables, so that we are facing an increase in travel production and absorption in areas with lower environmental quality. On the contrary, there is a positive spatial correlation between the production of walking and cycling space with environmental quality. This means that we are faced with an increase in the area of ​​pedestrian and cycling paths with a higher environmental quality. However, the same spatial patterns are not observed in the regions.Conclusion:         The evaluation of the effectiveness of transportation variables on the environmental quality of Tehran, which is the main goal of this research, revealed significant facts. The results of the analysis show the existence of a positive spatial connection between the area of ​​the cycling and walking paths with the quality of the environment; The subject of pedestrianized cities has now received much attention from researchers in the field of urban planning, which shows the importance of this variable in environmental quality issues. In fact, walking is one of the daily manifestations of the active involvement of humans or their environment or urban space. It can be recognized and interacted with only by walking in the city. With the increase in travel production and attraction, we are facing a lower environmental quality. The cores of the city, which are usually located in the centers and older areas of the city, are a potential possibility to attract travel and are more likely to face pollution and poor environmental quality. The production of rider-oriented space under the modern urbanism style and influenced by Cartesian subjective thinking, the production of artificial space for the second cycle of capital accumulation and the emergence of Fordism and urban zoning will lead to the reduction and degradation of the quality of the urban environment.

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