Urban Renewal through Sustainable Development: A Case Study in Iran

Decayed urban areas, especially those located in the city center, are one of the major problems of cities. These areas, which known as the main nucleus of cities at the time of their emergence, have lost their previous prosperity and importance due to several reasons such as the deterioration of their properties, the immigration of their original residents and the development of the city in other areas. They are mostly old neighborhoods where the middle and low classes of the society live together. In this paper, we aim to examine the problems of urban blight in the Bagherabad neighborhood, Rasht, Iran, from the sustainability perspective and provide it with a renewal plan. Bagherabad is a decayed urban neighborhood facing with serious physical, social, cultural, environmental and economic problems. Not only have these issues affected this neighborhood and its inhabitants, but they also have spread to its neighboring areas. To mitigate the adverse effects of these issues, we propose a restoration plan with a substantial focus on elevating social qualities such as vitality, dynamism, identity, social interactions and security. For this purpose, based on the field surveys, questionnaires and interviews with a considerable number of residents, we collect the required information about the existing issues in the neighborhood. Then, we propose a sustainable plan using descriptive methods, expertise knowledge and experiences have gained from the implementation of renewal plans in other regions.