Neighborhood Environment Quality Improvement with Community Participation Approach by Participation, Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) (Case study: Cyrus Neighborhood, Tehran, Iran)

One of the mos t significant concerns of urban planners, at metropolitan cities, especially in old and worn out textures, is the reduction of the quality of life and the environment, so they are always seeking for a way to improve these qualities. Low level of available services and amenities, besides physical and social disorders, have caused numerous problems and have totally become as important factors of unsus tainability in such a metropolitan area. In this article, we aimed to identify those effective factors which contribute to environmental quality of neighborhoods, such as Cyrus in the city of Tehran, which have experienced urban decayed. A research method that was employed in this paper is descriptive – analytical. Data were obtained from ques tionnaires dis tributed to a randomly selected sample of 384 respondents also the interview technique was applied to gather data from residents. After that ques tionnaire was developed using the identified external and internal factors, and determined s trategies adminis tered to 30 experts in the field of urban planning. Further, experts participated in the formal group discussion in order to weight SWOT factors and prioritize the identified s trategies, respectively. The results of this s tudy sugges t that according to the perspective of residents, experts reflected in the s trategic analysis plan by using the SWOT, Internal and External (Matrix IE) and QSPM matrix; one of the key factors and the mos t preferred s trategy to improve environmental quality in Cyrus is considering social factors such as maintaining local and original residents, increasing safety/security, keeping identity of neighborhoods and creating open spaces and decent leisure places.

Keywords:

Quality of Life , Environmental Quality , Neighborhood Satisfaction , Participation , Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM)