Spatial analysis of urban livability at the neighborhood level of Tehran city

In today's world, people spend most of their time outdoors, so urban spaces have a significant impact on human life. Also, these spaces play a prominent role in social relations between residents, providing correct culture, healthy society and creating urban livability. The issue of urban livability is a spatial quality that arises from different types of business opportunities, leisure, dense pedestrian population. If urban spaces are properly planned and designed, they can provide opportunities for social interactions, and these seemingly insignificant interactions provide the social fabric of a lively urban life. The current research was conducted with the aim of investigating and evaluating the level of livability in the neighborhoods of Tehran. Today, under the influence of economic-social, physical and demographic conditions as well as unbalanced urban development, the city of Tehran has experienced different challenges to the lives of its citizens, which have had no result other than the decline of livability in the city.

The data used in this research was obtained from the information of statistical blocks of 2015 of Iran Statistics Center, urban land use map of Tehran, field survey and Open Street Map website. GIS and Global Mapper software have been used for data extraction and classification. due to the large number of indicators, the factor analysis method available in the SPSS software was used to reduce the indicators to a few important and basic factors. In order to measure livability, 6 main components, namely economic, population and tourism, quality of life, air quality, nightlife and local government were used in the form of 18 indicators. Then, due to the fact that the direction of each index was different in terms of being positive or negative, the fuzzy dimensionless method was used to unify their direction. then the factor analysis method available in the SPSS was used to reduce the indicators to a few important and basic factors. In fact, the factor analysis method is a multivariate method that is used to summarize or reduce data. In this way, this method converts a large number of explanatory variables of a subject under investigation into a smaller number of hidden or immanent dimensions, which are called factors. After extracting the number of factors, a hot spot map was produced for each factor separately using the Hotspot method. Then, by combining the map of each factor, the final map of vitality in the city of Tehran was drawn. The autocorrelation method of local Morans was also used to examine the pattern of urban livability.

livability in Tehran can be summarized in 4 main factors. The first factor, which is the main factor in urban livability, is the most influential in the category of livability with 19% of the total variance. The lowest variance is related to factor 4, which includes 10% of the total variance. In general, the total variance of each of the 4 factors is 60% of the total variance, which showed the satisfactory factor analysis for urban livability. Based on the combined map of livability, it can be said that the central part of the city, which included Pamnar, Bazar, Inglebal, Valiasr, etc., had the highest level of livability in Tehran metropolis. Also, the results of the research showed that by moving away from the central part of the city, the level of livability gradually decreases. Autocorrelation of local residents in Tehran showed that the main cluster of urban vitality is located in the central part of the city. Therefore, based on this figure, it can be said that urban livability in Tehran is characterized by a cluster pattern. The main reason for clustering of livability in the central part can be the high concentration of mixed uses as well as the high population density in these areas.

The combined livability map showed that the central parts of the city, which included the whole zone 6 and parts of zones 2, 3, 7, 10, 11 and 12, have high vitality. Generally, these neighborhoods are in a good condition in terms of urban livability in terms of access to urban uses and also due to the large distribution of scientific and educational uses. In addition to the central areas of the city, parts of the zone 22, which included the areas of Chitgar Park, Fars Gulf Sea, and Iran Mall, have relatively good livability. The southern parts of the city, despite the low price of housing and also the high population density, have not been able to be in a good condition in terms of urban vitality. In fact, the main reason for the low vitality in the southern parts is that these areas are in a poor condition in terms of land use mix, vegetation, the amount of night light and also the pollutants suspended in the air.