Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• mostafa mohamadi dehcheshme ¹
• Hadi Alizadeh ²

¹ Assistant Professor of geography and Urban Planning, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz

² Ph.D Student of Geography and urban Planning, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz

Abstract

Extended Abstract
Introduction
Today, given the increasing trend of urbanization and the progressive growth of city and citizens’ risk-taking in relation to accidents and hazards, the necessity of addressing the security issue as one of the key determinants of a good city is felt more than ever, and this challenge has led theorists to find a definition of a healthy, safe and sustainable city. In its report on strengthening the urban safety and security in 2007, the United Nations has made human security and safety equivalent to supporting the vital needs of human, namely, freedom from undesirable conditions of life and bringing people closer to their aspirations and ambitions. This Interpretation of Human Security and Safety in the Copenhagen Declaration of 2005 was completed with the emphasis on efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition, creating food security, development and livelihoods, health services including safe drinking water, proper sanitation and shelter, and participation in social and cultural life. However, attempts to establish urban security on a global scale have generally confronted the offender rather than focusing on crime and the causes of security threats in urban areas. It can be argued that there is a certain amount of violence in every given city, but violence at the city level has not been randomly distributed and for a better attitude towards security topic, the factors creating insecurity in urban spaces should be sought and identified. Considering the mentioned issues and the necessity to pay attention to the security in urban spaces, in the present study, the city of Urmia has been evaluated as the basis of the study. Over the last few decades, the city as the capital of the province of West Azerbaijan, with the acceptance of various Kurdish ethnicities, Assyrian and Armenian Christians to live in the city and increasing the marginalization in the north, northwestern, and southern regions of the city, has become an appropriate context for creating insecure and anomalous spaces due to increasing ethnic and ideological prejudices among Azeri and other ethnic groups, and conflicts and increasing crime rates in the city. Ethnic bias, the lack of balanced distribution of resources and facilities at the city level, ideological bias among ethnicities, the lack of sustainable physical infrastructure in marginalized areas with ethnic diversity that has led to insecurity and dissatisfaction among residents and finally, distrust of citizens and ethnicities to influential institutions and urban policymakers in collaborative discussions on ideological issues has caused insecurity and dissatisfaction among citizens and reduced security in the cities and districts mentioned, for example, the formation of insecure urban areas such as Zurabad and Muftabad indicate the anomalous and unsafe situations in these areas in Urmia. The issue of the security crisis and the increase of social anomalies and ethnicity along with the issue of marginalization have made this challenge in the city to be considered as one of the challenges of urban management in terms of security and social issues. Considering the above mentioned issue, in the process of achieving urban security in Urmia, the issue of security realization has been evaluated through studying the components of structuralist approach in urban security of Urmia in this study.
 
Material method
The present study was conducted with the applied targeting and “descriptive-analytical” method to analyze the security situation in urban spaces of Urmia city with regard to the structuralist approach in urban security. In order to achieve the set goals, to collect the descriptive part of the research, library studies and documents on the topic of research were used, and for the analytical part of the research, a survey method and a questionnaire were used to analyze the security of Urmia urban spaces in three fundamental, dynamic and safety dimensions from the citizens’ points of view. To analyze the research data, considering the components of the structuralist approach in the form of SPSS software, Pearson statistical correlation test was used to assess the internal relation of the security components in Urmia, T test was used to assess the priority of the security components in Urmia and the Diagnostic analysis model was used used to predict the implementation process of security in Urmia city.
 
Results & Discussion
The obtained results are the outcome of proper internal correlation among the components of security assessment in Urmia urban spaces. These results show that, firstly, the internal correlation of the components, in terms of the sample population, is meaningful at the level of 0.99.  The final analysis of the priority of urban security components from a structural viewpoint in Urmia shows that the fundamental component with the difference between the lower mean and the two other components with the level of 0.0858 and the lower T, have a more inappropriate situation than the other two components in the city of Urmia from the citizen’s points of view. On the other hand, the final statistics of the diagnostic analysis shows that in order to predict the security in Urmia urban spaces, the safety component in continuation of confirming the preliminary results of the diagnostic analysis with a general prediction level of 0.522, has a stronger prediction for security in Urmia urban spaces. The results obtained in predicting urban security in Urmia show that, these conditions, in the present status, with the more obvious conditions, can be very important in the quantity and quality of security and its realization or non-realization in Urmia. These results show that considering the basic and fundamental factors in urban security issue in urban spaces of Urmia from the citizens’ viewpoints can be very helpful in establishing safe urban spaces in this city.
 
Conclusion
The structuralist approach to security, with regard to its theorizing process, addresses the assessment of the security category based on the conditions of developing countries. Its constituent parts also show root problems and challenges that can lead to insecurity in urban spaces in these countries. With this background, the components of this approach were evaluated in Urmia. In fact, in order to assess the state and accuracy of the definition of security in urban spaces of Urmia, the internal connection of selected components from the structuralist point of view was first measured. This assessment was aimed at demonstrating whether or not the components and indicators selected for the purpose of explaining the urban security category in Urumia had a coherence and intrinsic connectivity to illustrate this explanation. Secondly, the reason for assessing the priority of safety components from the point of view of structuralist approach in Urmia was to address planning to improve the level of security in urban spaces in Urmia by recognizing the importance of the components due to their weaknesses and strengths. Finally, our goal was to respond to this question that, which one of the selected components could better fulfill the security process in the urban environment of Urumia in accordance with the existing conditions.

Keywords

• Urban Security
• Fundamental Component
• Structuralist Approach
• Urmia city

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