Ieving an Integrated Approach to Reduce Urban Vulnerability Against Earthquake Case Study: Metropolis of Mashhad, Iran

Achieving an integrated approach to reduce urban vulnerability against earthquake Case Study: Metropolis of Mashhad, Iran By Mohammad Hadi Mahdinia Supervisor: Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christa Reicher Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stefan Greiving Examiner: Dr. Mehdi Vazifedoost A thesis submitted to TU Dortmund University The School of Spatial Planning in fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 In the name of God Declaration I hereby declare that this final paper is the result of independent Investigation. Where it is indebted to the work of others, Acknowledgement has been duly made. Date: Signature: 2 Acknowledgement This research was financially supported by Faculty of art and architecture of Islamic Azad University (Mashhad Branch). I would like firstly to express my profound gratitude to my colleagues in this university. Moreover, this research would not have been successful without the support from many people in Iran and Germany and I would like to thank all of them. I am very grateful for the scientific guidance and much encouragement from my first supervisor, Professor Dr. Christa Reicher, who directed me throughout the study. Her wisdom and knowledgeable remark greatly stimulated me to deepen my insight into the subject. Her supervision considerably helped me to develop and formulate this research and her constructive and innovative comments contributed a lot to the academic qualification of the thesis. Many thanks go to my second supervisor, Professor Dr. Stefan Greiving. His critical comments always had challenge to my research work and his useful suggestions greatly contributed to improve the presentation and contents of this thesis. I also would like to thank Dr. Mark Fleischhauer from Institute of Spatial Planning to give me valuable comments on the proposal at the beginning of my research. I would like to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Mahdi Vazifedoost for his useful suggestion for my career and constant encouragement from the beginning to the end. He shared his kindness and working experience with me and his enthusiasm for planning work highly impacted on me. I would also like to express that following ten years as a university staff member (I am currently a lecturer at the Islamic Azad University of Mashhad) and of executing professional projects in urban planning and urban design, the opportunity to write a PhD thesis was very valuable for me. I hope that my ten-year experience in professional and educational work will have prepared the grounds for the success of my thesis and its results. Balancing PhD research with normal family life is not easy. Maryam and Ghazal have suffered more than I did. I am very grateful for their constant supporting and understanding and now it is my turn to do more for them. Particular thanks go to Maryam, my wife, for her endless love and I would like dedicate this thesis to her. Mohammad Hadi Mahdinia Dortmund 3 Abstract The linkage between spatial planning and disaster management has been ignored in the urban area of Iran longtime. By extending of urbanization and industrialization in Iran, cities are faced problems such as expansion on hazard prone areas. The central issues of this study are to explore the risk relationship between risk reduction and urban development for spatial planning in both theory and practice, and to emphasize the need for better cooperation between spatial planning and disaster management in rapidly urbanizing regions The main goal of the study is to examine and develop a spatial planning methodology that is led to promoting the urban resilience. Several research questions concerning the integration of disaster management and spatial planning, and information for planning support, have been examined. Extensive literature review, quantitative and qualitative analysis based on the primary and secondary data collection have been applied to answer these questions. Based on the theoretical considerations, disaster management possess four phases, i.e. mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, all of which need to be integrated into spatial planning. The status of mitigation phase is closely related with the land use conditions of disaster prone areas and zones. In order to mitigate the negative impacts and exert the positive ones, land use planning in disaster prone areas must consider proper spatial organization and measures to integrate the goals of urban resiliency. Only through the cooperation between spatial planning and disaster management can these measures become effective. This study proposes that proactive-integrated policy and approaches need to be promoted in order to gain enough capacity to organize and preserve the mass and space against natural disasters along with spatial requirement of urban development. Spatial requirements for achieving to urban resilience should be considered in advance and therefore it is important to have a paradigm shift both in disaster management and spatial planning and design. In the Iranian context, urban planning and disaster management are both undergoing a complex transformation process in concepts, contents, working approaches and institutionalization. The city of Mashhad is the case study. Mashhad urban development process presented in chapter 5 shows that the goals of disaster management in disaster prone areas have not been adequately reflected in the spatial planning system. A multi-disciplinary approach to deal with the conflicts of disaster risk reduction process and land use impacts in the urbanizing areas has not yet been fully developed. With the rapid urbanization and industrialization of recent decades, urban land use conversion has become faster than ever and this reality is reflected in planning’s failure, to some extent, in protecting the natural environment and in regulating proper land use. A common concept for disaster management is not fully shared among spatial planners, nor has a integrated policy framework for disaster management system been established. Even though since 2005, various policy efforts from spatial planning and disaster management have gradually converged on goals and processes, institutional segmentation has brought about low efficiency of policy implementation. 4 Since the 1980s, Mashhad’s urban expansion has massively encroached upon the disaster prone areas of the city. Because disaster prone areas are occupied by informal settlements, the impacts from urban development and land use conversion on these zones is completely visible. The captured the results of field observations show that urban development has had a significant impact on increasing urban vulnerability. In the meantime, the time-lag between the two policy processes for disaster risk reduction and urban development has made it difficult for urban planners and disaster managers to adopt effective measures to address the vulnerability issues in an integrated and coordinated manner. Risk reduction issues in Mashhad’s urban region have so far not been tackled in an integrated way due to the lack of systematic policy arrangements at the strategic and local level, the lack of effective mechanism for institutional cooperation and the lack of approaches to incorporating disaster risk reduction aims into spatial planning. The experiences of developed countries show that how a cooperative approach in spatial planning and disaster management is helpful to reach to urban resiliency. The experience of developed countries spatial planning and disaster management offers many valuable lessons not only in planning content, but also planning process for Mashhad or other cities in Iran. Good horizontal and hierarchical cooperation is important for spatial planning and disaster management to work together to reduce urban vulnerability. In the meantime, a positive implementation instrument, such as risk assessment and management, was regarded as a useful tool to effectively stimulate the dialogue between disaster managers and urban planners. These experiences show that integrating risk reduction issues in spatial planning could bring opportunities for making a resilience city with safe space. The trend of urban development in Mashhad shows that the size of the urban expansion spatially informal settlements will be larger in the coming decades and the pressure on high risk and disaster prone areas. Several new problems which may emerge on an even larger scale will make the situation more serious and complicated especially when an integrated solution of disaster risk reduction has not been fully realized. Therefore it is urgent to have integrated planning options from the strategic level to the local action level. This is the key point of the conceptual model for integrated plan-making process for urban planning system presented in this study. At the strategic level, proactive land use planning for urban development should consider hazard issues at the initial stage before negative impacts occur. Sharp lines of responsibility between different departments should be demarcated so as to harmonize the fragmented and dispersed local efforts dealing with the disaster risk reduction issues regionally and locally. Public participation is encouraged during the process in order to achieve consensus among the different stakeholders. At the local level, the measures of zoning to control construction and land use in and around the hazard prone areas can be used but should reflect the consensus of views from various agents such as urban planners, disaster managers and the public at large. Useful information and knowledge is

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