Assessing the Level of Social Resilience in District 9 of Tehran Metropolis

Due to the increase in the occurrences of natural disasters in cities and the resulting casualties and socio-economic and physical damages, the local authorities are attempting to find approaches and adopt policies to increase the resilience of cities in order to withstand these calamities. Resilience, therefore has become one of the important issues to attend in order to minimize the vulnerabilities of cities. District 9 of Tehran Metropolis, because of the presence of some of the important city infrastructures in it, is selected as a case study to assess the different domains of social resilience of the different neighborhoods of this district, their spatial distribution, and also to find out if there exist differences in the levels of the social resilience among the neighborhoods of this district. Through a thorough review of related literature and taking into account the special condition of the District 9 and also the Tehran Metropolis, five domains of social resilience; namely Social Capital, Social Values, Social Structure, Social Equity and variety, and Social beliefs and Culture were extracted. The indicators depicting these different domains were also extracted from the literature. A questionnaire containing 32 questions was designed to collect the needed data for evaluating the applicability the extracted conceptual framework for assessing the social resilience of the neighborhoods and the district 9 of the Tehran Metropolis. Stratified random sampling was used to identify the number needed questionnaires to be sampled. Systematic sampling was used to collect the 106 questionnaires required for the purposes of this study. Exploratory factor analysis was used to extract the underlying factors of each social resilience domain and to identify their corresponding indicators. The findings of study show that the social capital domain of social resilience is composed of three factors: Social cohesion, Social support, and Social participation; the social values domain is composed by three factors of the Sense of Belonging to the Community, Social Awareness, and Social Capability; the social structure of the domain is composed of three factors: Community Dynamism and Empowerment, Population Structure, and the Level of Education; Social equity and variety domain is composed of three factors: Access to Safe and Secure Space in times of disaster, Access to Basic Services, and Access to Educational Services; Social beliefs and culture domain is composed of two factors: Social Beliefs and Social Culture. Each of these factors are represented by a number of indicators. A composite social resilience index was computed to assess the level of social resilience of each neighborhood. In order to find differences in the level of social resilience among the 7 neighborhoods that comprise the District 9 of the Tehran Metropolis, a one-way ANOVA was used. The results of the study show that, in terms of social resilience, there exist no difference among the 7 neighborhoods of the district 9; social resilience in the neighborhoods of the district is very low and the two domains of social equity and variety, and social beliefs and culture have are very low in these neighborhoods.