Identification, Dimension and Evaluation of Catalytic Projects in Tehran, Iran

Since the 1980s, a wide range of physical and non-physical interventions, including megaprojects and flagships to small-scale projects and temporary usage, are prescribed as catalysts for urban regeneration. The strategy of utilizing urban catalysts as a tool for urban renewal has been encouraging by many city authorities through specific subsidization and privileges. However, there is no correct and precise definition of the tools and the qualities they should provide as their impacts. Besides, some criticize the catalytic projects due to their unsustainable, unjust, and destructive consequences.  This paper intends to provide a more comprehensive definition of urban catalysts by reviewing the existing literature. The research has been done through a deductive and inductive approach to reach the principal dimensions and criteria for catalytic projects. It uses a series of potential projects and interventions in the City of Tehran (16 projects and practices) as case studies to check the dimensions and criteria and the quality of each project as catalysts. The quality of the selected case studies was ranked through expert judgment and checklist method. The findings show the cases' rank on how their catalytic impacts comply with sustainable development goals. According to the results, seven criteria (environmental sustainability, context-based development, pattern making, branding, social quality of life, economic prosperity, and market adaptability) are essential to ensure the sustainability of catalytic impacts of catalyst projects

Transforming agriculture to climate change in Famenin County, West Iran through a focus on environmental, economic and social factors

When the social, economic, or ecological conditions under which socio-ecological systems are expected to adapt become untenable, a system may transform into a fundamentally new system. Within agricultural systems, farmers have the option of significantly transforming their practices, or migrating elsewhere in the search for a better lifestyle (and exiting the agricultural socio-ecological system). However, if governments, communities and industry leaders are to provide climate change impact support to agricultural regions, then it becomes critical to predict the conditions under which farmers, households and communities will choose to either transform their farming or migrate. We hypothesize that those conditions are likely to reflect environmental, economic and social conditions within a region, where some communities and/or some farmers may respond differently depending on their environmental, economic and social factors. Here, we examine how the perception of farmers to transformational change is influenced by social, environmental and economic factors in six villages within the Famenin County of western Iran, which have experienced a notable recent decrease in groundwater levels, an increase in temperature due to reduced rainfall and no support from government. Results show that environmental, economic and social factors were all important influences on the social transformations that were occurring within each village and across the region. In sum, environmental flexibility and local corporation eased the transformation process. Place attachment and social capital were critical to facilitate transformation during all parts of the transformation process. These results are discussed as two separate scenarios. Keywords: Transformation, Climate change adaptation, Environmental dependency, Economic factors, Social factor