Impact of the Right to City on Sense of Belonging among Gender Groups (Case Study: Urmia Public Spaces)

Document Type : Research article

Authors

1 Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

3 PhD Student in Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

Introduction
One of the main issues of urban areas in Iran is that the right to a city as a collective right is confiscated in favor of private rights and profits of individuals. In other words, over the past decades, the value of use has been discarded in favor of exchange value. This approach is directly destroying the living areas of the residents. It is one of the most important manifestations of citizens' evacuation from urban areas with the loss of social function and use. The purpose of this study is to investigate the sense of belonging of gender groups with the impact of the right to the city in urban public places with an emphasis on the city of Urmia. To prove this hypothesis, I use the methods of belonging of men and women to urban public places during everyday life. In this regard, the relation between the right to the city and the concepts of belonging to the city are considered in their everyday experiences in the scale of everyday living places.
Methodology
Since this research seeks to determine the relationship between the variable factors of the right to the city and the sense of belonging, it is practical in terms of purpose and collecting descriptive information. There are a lot of methods to investigate the relationships between variable factors. One of these methods is the structural equation model with multivariate analysis. Structural Equation Modeling is a comprehensive statistical approach for testing hypotheses about the relationships between observed and latent variables. Through this approach, we can test the acceptability of theoretical models in specific societies. In the analysis model of this research, the influence of the variable of the right to city is sense of belonging with significant factor loads. 
Results and discussion
Among the internal latent variables, the highest influences on the of the right to the city are including the variables of component of citizenship right with a direct effect of 0.90, the right of social interaction with a direct effect of 0.74, the right of allocation of place with 0.67, the right of centrality with a direct effect of 0.52, and the right of participating with direct effect of 0.51. The most influential effect of sense of belonging structure is on urban belonging (0.67). There are numbers on each of the observed variables which shows the degree of explained variance by the latent variable. Maximum Structural Explanation of the right to the city is the variable of the right of allocating to urban places. Variable of city belonging is explained 45% by latent variable of sense of belonging. Standard model estimation is observed for two groups. The estimated impact of the sense of belonging to the city is 0.87 in the men's group and 0.80 in the group of women. Therefore, it is concluded that the group of men feels more belonging.
Conclusion
The findings showed that the estimated impact of sense of belonging to the city was 0.87 in men and 0.80 in women. This represents a greater sense of belonging in the male group. From these findings, we can conclude that the right to the city has been neglected among women. This refers to gender inequalities and the gendered nature of urban place, the domination of power relations and patriarchy is one of the main reasons. The right place is where all citizens consider it to be their own.  We emphasized on three good fitness indicators from one hand and the experimental data on the other to test theoretical models of research. Therefore, suitable adaptation was provided between the models depicted or the structured model with experimental data and with emphasis on structural equations. A suitable model was developed for the relationship between independent and dependent variables. The optimal fit of the extracted models represents the structural equation modeling.   

Keywords

References

  1. Aitken, S., 2001, Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity, London and New York: Routledge.
  2. Akhbari, R., 2016, Homelessness as a Existentil and Universal Part of Society; Why Should We Fiht for “The Right to the City” Concept? Haft Shahr, Vol. 4, No. 49 and 50, PP. 54-56. (In Persian)
  3. Alcoff, L., 2006, Visible Identities, Oxford: OUP.
  4. Alinia, F., and Jabbarian, J., 2014, Investigating the Sense of Belonging to the Place in Chahar Bagh, Isfahan with a Phenomenological Approach, 6th National Conference on Urban Planing and Management with Emphasis on the Elements of Islamic City, Mashhad. (In Persian)
  5. Brenner, N., and Elden, S., 2009, Introduction, in N., Brenner and S. Elden (Eds.), State, Space, World: Selected Essays by Henri Lefebvre (PP. 1–48), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  6. Brenner, N., Marcuse, P., and Mayer, M., 2017, Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City, Translated by Mahmood Abdolazadeh, et al., Office of Cultural Studies. (In Persian)
  7. Chen Misgav, C., and Fenster, T., 2016, Day by Day- Protest by Protest: Temporal Activism and the Feminist Mizrahi Right to the City, Cities, JCIT-01752; No of Pages 7.
  8. De Certeau, M., 1984, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press.
  9. Dikeç, M., and Gilbert, L., 2002, Right to the City: Homage or a New Societal Ethics? Capitalism Nature Socialism, PP. 59-74.

10. Fenster, T, 2005, The Right to the Gendered City: Different Formations of Belonging in Everyday Life, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, PP. 217-231.

11. Fenster, T., 2004, The Global City and the Holy City: Narratives on Planning, Knowledge and Diversity (London: Pearson).

12. Fenster, T., 2005, Identity Issues and Local Governance: Women's Everyday Life in the City, Social Identities, Vol. 11, No. 1, PP. 23-39.

13. Fenster, T., 2010, The Right to the City and Gendered Everyday Life, Makan, Adalah’s Journal for Land, Planning and Justice, Vol. 2, PP. 40-50.

  1. 14.  Gharai, F., 2012, Identification of Environmental Factors by Relying on Physical and Aesthetic Characteristics and Its Impact on the Presence of Women in Public Spaces of the City, 1th Conference on Women and Urban Life, Tehran. (In Persian).

15. Habibi, M., and Amiri, M., 2016, Right to the City from Current to Ideal City, The Iranian Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 5, No. 2, PP. 9-30. (In Persian)

16. Hancock, C., Blanchard, S., and Chapuis, A., 2017, Banlieusard. E. S Claiming a Right to the City of Light: Gendered Violence and Spatial Politics in Paris, Cities. JCIT-01798; P. 6.

17. Harvey, D., 2008, The Right to the City, New Left Review, 53: PP. 23–40.

18. Judi Gollor, P., Zamanian, R., and Fath, H., 2016, Tracking the Notin of Justie in City and Urbanizatin Theories: Critial Urban Theory and the Theory of the Right to The City, Haft Shahr, Vol. 4, No. 49 and 50, PP. 100-113. (In Persian)

19. Lefebvre, H., 1996, The Urban Revolution, Translated by Robert Bononno, NewYork, University of Minnesota Press.

20. Maleki, M,. Parsa, S., Behzad, V., Moradi, E., 2015, Investigating the Sense of Dependency to the Place of Living Based on Gender Differences (Case Study: Ilam City), Journal of Housing and Rural Environment, Vol. 33, No. 148, PP. 98-108. (In Persian)

21. Massey, D., 1994, Space, Place and Gender, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

22. Mitchell, D., 2003, The Righ to the City; Social Justice and the Fight for the Public Space, London and NewYork: Gilford Press.

23. National Statistical Center of Iran, 2016, General Population and Housing Census. (In Persian)

24. Nersicians, E., and Ohadi, Y., 2011, Identity and Everyday Life of Girls in Public Spaces of the City of Rafsanjan Students' Girl Students, Iranian Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 3, No. 1. (In Persian)

25. Plan and Budget Organization (PBO), 2010, West Azerbaijan Province. (In Persian)

26. Purcell, M., 2002, Excavating Lefebvre: The Right to the City and Its Urban Politics of the Inhabitant, Geojournal, 58: 99–108

27. Purcell, M., 2003, Citizenship and the Right to Theglobal City: Reimagining the Capitalist World Order, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 27, No. 3, PP. 564-590.

28. Purcell, M., 2014, Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the City, Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 1, PP. 141-154.

29. Rafiyans, M., and Alvandipour, N., 2014, Conceptualization of Thought Right to the City; Seeking a Conceptual Model, Iranian Journal of Socioligy, Vol. 16, No. 2, PP. 25-47. (In Persian)

30. Rahbari, L., and Sharepour, M., 2013, Gender and Right to the City in Tehran, Article Presented at the World Conference of Integration of Knowledge by Worldconferences, Net, Langkawi, Malaysia, November 2013, E-ISBN: 978-967-11768-2-5.

31. Sennett, R., 2008, Quant, Available: http://www.richardsennett.com  

32. Sharepour, M., 2015, Right to the City and Urban Public Spaces, People and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 2, PP. 51-66.

33. Sharepour, M., Rafatjah, M, and Rahbari, L., 2015, Citizens Position in Arnestein's Ladder: Gender Analysis of Participatory Dimentsion of Right Ti The City, Social Welfare, Vol. 15, No. 57, PP. 179-205. (In Persian)

34. Taghvaee, A., Azizi, D., and Yazdanian, A., 2016, Investiate the Role of “The Right to the City” Theoty in the Productin and Reproductin of Urban Space, Haft Shahr, Vol. 4, No. 49 and 50, PP. 88-99. (In Persian)

35. Whyte, W. H., 1980, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Conservation Foundation, Washington D.C.

Yuval Davis, N., 2012, The Politics of Belonging, London: SAGE.

Geographical Urban Planning Research (GUPR)
Volume 7, Issue 1
April 2019
Pages 1-19

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics