Prioritize of Intervention Zones in Central Deteriorated Fabrics of Arak City According to Functional, socio-Economic and Environmental Indicators

Urban deteriorated fabrics form remarkable parts of many cities of Iran. These regions have many structural, social and economic problems and cannot do function as urban regions owing to these problems. In order to solve these problems or at least reduce the negative impacts, before doing any interference action, detection of these urban deteriorated fabrics and prioritizing intervention zones is vital. A review at existing related literature indicates the prevalent efforts are associated with the rules approved by the High Council of Architecture and Urban Planning of Iran. According to their criteria, only physical indicators are used for detecting deteriorated urban fabrics and prioritization. Many urban experts believe that considering only physical indicators is not sufficient and there are more factors that incorporate in this matter. Accordingly, some urban researchers started to use more complete and efficient factors in this topic in recent years, although most of them suffice to give some limited indices or give some suggestions. So in this article we try to have more detailed and precise considerations for recognition of urban deteriorated fabrics and prioritizing of intervention zones in our study area. For this aim, we consider socio-economi c and environmental indicators as well as physical factors. This paper scrutinizes the effect of including socio-economic and environmental indicators as well as physical factors in prioritizing the intervention zones of our study area. It also examined whether the interference of these factors, in addition to conventional measures, priorities will change as distinct or only in their scrutiny and the possibility of utilizing them can be used as alternative indicators? It’s essential to be mentioned that in Iran there is no ability to access many necessary information for calculating socio-economic criteria so this limitation affects our analysis for sure, although there are more detailed indicators in evaluating our criteria compare to similar researches. Our study area was central urban deteriorated fabrics of Arak. This area is about 62 hectare with a population of 18478 people. The condition of this area is critical and about 85 percent of buildings should be demolished or repaired. For prioritizing vulnerable blocks of our study area according to above triplet indicators (functional, socio-economic and environmental indicators), at first some criteria were selected for every indicator. Then for creating prioritized maps related to every indicator and finally linking them and overlaying the maps, we used two methods of decision making, AHP and Delphi. In this way, we gathered our necessary information from master and detailed plans of Arak (standards of Council of Architecture and Urban Planning, approved in 1383), some related reports which has done in our study area by consulting companies and also some area visiting and filling questionnaires. As can be seen, in the final map, which resulted from overlaying all of criteria of triple indicators, prioritized regions are very similar to those according to functional indicators especially in the first and second priorities. So we can conclude if for any specific reason, information on functional factors is not accessible,  socio-economic and environmental indicators for prioritizing of intervention zones can be replaced. Also by adding these information we can have more detailed and accurate view of the region which as well as improving prioritizing method of urban deteriorated fabrics, will help our managers  in next steps that they should chose the action strategies for solving the problems in these prioritized regions.