Safe City

Safe City

Evaluation the per capita availability level of services land uses with the approach of enhancing resilience against Covid-19 (case study: Tehran metropolitan area)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Isfahan Art University, Isfahan, Iran.
2 Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Ira
Abstract
Introduction
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), assessed by the United Nations as the biggest challenge facing the whole human since the World War II, has triggered extensive scientific research from various perspectives. Urban characteristics, such as city size, density, geographic distance to the domestic epicenter and health infrastructure, have large impacts on resilience of a city against the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. While infectious diseases have occurred with increasing frequencies in cities in recent decades, there is still significant knowledge shortage concerning the role of urban characteristics in city’s epidemic resilience. In an urban resilience perspective, urban preparedness and emergency governance for infectious diseases has shown many loopholes and difficulties facing the challenge of COVID-19. Deeper understanding of urban resilience for health urgency events can not only help to guide post-disaster socioeconomic recovery, but also inform key factors and issues necessary to be taken care of for the next coming pandemic disasters. Different with natural disasters whose durations are usually not in the hand of human control, pandemic disaster impacts vary greatly in time duration depending on urban preparedness and intervention measures. The differences can be attributed to factors including population density and connectivity, emergency data and governance capability, information validation and dissemination, as well as citizen and community engagement. Comparative studies of COVID-19 situation across cities can add knowledge to the resilience framework regarding pandemic mitigation measures. Such evaluations would help city planners, policy-makers, and managers to understand better the current resilience level of cities against pandemic disasters. To provide empirical knowledge on factors that affecting a city’s pandemic disaster resilience, this paper analyzes the effects of service availability on the urban resilience against Covid-19 in Tehran city.
Methodology
The method of this research is based an applied type and descriptive-analytical approach with quantitative techniques. Data and information in this research were obtained using two library-documentary and field methods; In order to compile research literature and extract components and indicators, library-documentary studies including related books and articles. The data extracted through field observations in the form of interviews with the expert community (including 10 experts for weighting and prioritizing indicators) and per capita service uses extracted from the detailed plans of the 22 districts of Tehran were obtained. The indicators used in this research included 8 commercial, sports, recreational, health-treatment, park and green space, administrative, cultural and educational services. Finally, data analysis has been done using the combined SWARA-COPRAS model.
Results and discussion
The results show that there is no justice in the provision of service uses per capita in the regions of Tehran, and the system of having these types of land uses and the inequality coefficient are severe in the 22 districts of Tehran; The three districts 22, 1 and 3 of the city have the highest number of service per capita, so it can be said that these areas are more self-sufficient than other areas of Tehran, the residents of these areas need to travel during the outbreak of Covid-19 to provide their basic needs. This fact shows the possibility of being infected is less for these residents and also more resilience in emergency and quarantine conditions. The five districts 2, 6, 11, 19 and 12 have the second rank of having service users per capita and have an average status in terms of self-sufficiency and resilience against Covid-19. Other districts of Tehran city (including rest of the others) are in an inappropriate situation against Covid-19 with low per capita service users; The welfare of these areas is very low and the residents have to go to other areas to provide their basic and essential needs and travel more distances and more mobility, which increases the possibility of them contracting Covid-19, so it can be said that this category of districts under emergency and quarantine conditions show less resilience against Covid-19.
Conclusion
The results of this study can be a good guide for the urban management of Tehran metropolis area in order to provide the lack of per capita service users in the low-income districts and also to balance the distribution of these users in the city of Tehran in order to increase the self-sufficiency of districts and improve the resiliency of them.
Funding
There is no funding support.

Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.

Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 27 May 2025