Investigating the Role of Public Participation in Increasing the Social Resilience of Informal Settlements against the Covid-19 Pandemic (Case Study: Informal Settlements in Zanjan City)

Document Type : case study

Authors

• Mohammad Taghi Heydari ¹
• Mohsen Ahadanjad Roveshti ²
• Hossein Tahmasabi Moghadam ³

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Urban Planning, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

² Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Urban Planning, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

³ PhD, Department of Geography and Urban Planning, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zanjan Zanjan, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jgrd.2022.75436.1116

Abstract

A resilient society is one that can have structures, processes, and identity when a sudden or gradual change and pressure occurs in it, which can transform into a new and better organization and continue its life on a better level. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of public participation in increasing the social resilience of informal settlements against the epidemic of Covid-19 in Zanjan city. This applied research used aqualitative-quantitative method. Data collection was based on a specialized and documentary survey method, and the sample size included 15 experts from universities and research centers.The purposeful sampling method was used. Moreover, structural equation analysis model and path analysis method in PLS software were used for data processing. The findings show that among the indicators of social interaction, the tendency to communicate through virtual space is the most important variable, and the coefficient of determination of the variable “role of public participation” on the variable “social resilience against the diseases of Covid-19” is 0.853, which means that 85% of the changes in the dependent variable (resilience) are investigated with 4 independent variables(social trust, social cohesion, social bond and social interaction).Therefore,all four independent research variables have been able to simultaneously examine more than70% of dependent variables and influence resilience through17criteria defined in relation to each other. The remaining15% is obtained from other factors that indirectly affect resilience and the dependent variable of the research. Finally, it can be said that the vulnerable neighborhoods of Zanjan moderate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with the use of participation and as a result of promoting social resilience.
 

Keywords

• Public Participation
• Social Resilience
• Informal Settlements
• Covid-19 Pandemic

20.1001.1.20081391.1400.19.2.13.2

Main Subjects

• Planning in urban and rural areas

References

1. جهانگیری، ک.، استوار ایزدخواه، ی.، آذین، س.ع.، و جاروندی، ف. (1389). بررسی میزان مشارکت مردم در مقابله با بلایای طبیعی در استان خوزستان: دیدگاه‌های مسئولین. فصلنامه علمی پژوهشی امداد و نجات، 2(4)، 11-20.
2. رضابیگی داورانی، ع.، هوشمندی، ک.، راعی، م.، و دانشی.، س. (1399). نقش مشارکت جامعه و گروه‌های داوطلب در پیشگیری و کنترل کوید-۱۹ در ایران. نشریه ارتقای بهداشت نظامی، ۱(۳)، 111-114.
3. رفیعیان، م.، رضایی، م.، عسگری، ع.، پرهیزکار، ا.، و شایان، س. (1390)، تبیین مفهومی تاب‌آوری و شاخص سازی آن در مدیریت سوانح اجتماع‌محور (CBDM). برنامه‌ریزی و آمایش فضا (مدرس علوم انسانی)، 15(4)، 19-41.
4. روستا، م.، ابراهیم‌زاده، ع.، و ایستگلدی، م. (1397). ارزیابی میزان تاب‌آوری اجتماعی شهری (موردشناسی: شهر زاهدان). نشریه پژوهش و برنامه‌ریزی شهری، 9(32)، 1-14.
5. طهماسبی‌مقدم، ح.، احد‌نژادروشتی، م.، حیدری، م. ت.، و شغلی.، ع. (1400). تبیین عوامل مؤثر بر تاب‌آوری اجتماعی در برابر مخاطرات بیولوژیکال با تأکید بر کوید -19 (مطالعه موردی: شهر زنجان). جغرافیا و مخاطرات محیطی، 10(1)، 1-19.
6. فنی، ز.، و لیلا.، م. (1395). سنجش و ارزیابی تأثیر سبک زندگی بر میزان تاب‌آوری شهری مطالعه تطبیقی: محلات قیطریه و شکوفه شمالی در مناطق 1 و 19 تهران. مجله مطالعات جامعه‌شناختی شهری، (19)، 84-61.
7. لطفی، ح.، مفرح، م.، آفتاب، ا.، و مجنونی.، ع. (1397) نقش حکمروایی مطلوب شهری در افزایش تاب‌آوری سکونتگاه‌های غیررسمی در ایران (مطالعه موردی: کلانشهر تبریز). فصلنامه جغرافیا (برنامه‌ریزی منطقه‌ای)، 8(2)، 209-224.

 

8. Adger, W. N. (2000). Social and ecological resilience: Are they related? Progress in Human Geography, 24(3), 347-364.
9. Aldrich, D. (2019). Black wave: How networks governance shaped Japan's 3/11 disasters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
10. Alexander, D. E. (2013). Resilience and disaster risk reduction: An etymological journey. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 13(11), 2707-2716.
11. Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (2003). Navigating social-ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12. Briguglio, L., Cordina, G., Farrugia, N., & Vella, S. (2009). Economic vulnerability and resilience: concepts and measurements. Oxford Development Studies, 37(3), 229-247.
13. Burton, C. G. (2015). A validation of metrics for community resilience to natural hazards and disasters using the recovery from Hurricane Katrina as a case study. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(1), 67–86.
14. Carpenter, S., Walker, B., Anderies, J. M., Abel, N. (2001), From metaphor to measurement: Resilience of what to what? Ecosystems, 4(8), 765-781.
15. Cohen, O., Leykin, D., Lahad, M., Goldberg, A., & Aharonson-Daniel, L. (2013). The conjoint community resiliency assessment measure as a baseline for profiling and predicting community resilience for emergencies. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80(9), 1732-1741.
16. Copeland, W. E., McGinnis, E., Bai, Y., Adams, Z., Nardone, H., Devadanam, V., & Hudziak, J. J. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on college student mental health and wellness. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 60(1), 134-141.
17. Corburn, J., Vlahov, D., Mberu, B., Riley, L., Caiaffa, W. T., Rashid, S. F., & Ayad, H. (2020). Slum health: Arresting COVID-19 and improving well-being in urban informal settlements. Journal of Urban Health, 97(3), 348-357.
18. Cundill, G., Leitch, A. M., & Schultz, L. (2015). Encouraging learning. In Biggs, R., Schlüter, M., & Schoon, M. L. (Eds.), Principles for building resilience: Sustaining ecosystem services in social-ecological systems (pp. 174-200). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
19. Daneshpour, Z. A. (2020). Out of the coronavirus crisis, a new kind of urban planning must be born.Retrieved from https://novinshahrsaz.ir/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Out_of_the_coronavirus_crisis_a_new_kind_of_urban_planning_must.pdf
20. De Witte, H., Pienaar, J., & De Cuyper, N. (2016). Review of 30 years of longitudinal studies on the association between job insecurity and health and well‐being: Is there causal evidence? Australian Psychologist, 51(1), 18-31.
21. Fahlberg, A., Vicino, T.J., Fernandes, R., Potiguara, V. (2020). Confronting chronic shocks: Social resilience in Rio de Janeiro's poor neighborhoods, Cities, 99, 102623.
22. Fema, U. (2016). Department of Homeland Security. ICS Training Courses.
23. Fothergill, A., & Peek, L. A. (2004). Poverty and disasters in the United States: A review of recent sociological findings. Natural Hazards, 32(1), 89-110.
24. Hill, E., St. Clair, T., Wial, H., Wolman, H., Atkins, P., Blumenthal, P., Ficenec, S., & Friedhoff, A. (2012). Economic shocks and regional economic resilience. In Urban and regional policy and its effects: building resilient regions (pp. 193-274). Brookings Institution Press.
25. Hohnen, P., & Potts, J. (2007). Corporate social responsibility, an implementation guide for business, international institute for sustainable development (IISD). Retrieved from http://www.iisd. org/ pdf/ 2007/ csr_guide .pdf/ 08/01/2021.
26. Holling, C. S. (1973), Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematic, 4, 1-23.
27. Keck, M., & Sakdapolrak, P. (2013). What is social resilience? Lessons learned and ways forward. Erdkunde, 67(1), 5–19.
28. Khalili, S., Harre, M., Morley, P. (2018). A temporal social resilience framework of communities to disasters in Australia. Environmental Disasters, 5(23), 1-9.
29. Kusumastuti, R. D., Husodo, Z. A., Suardi, L., & Danarsari, D. N. (2014). Developing a resilience index towards natural disasters in Indonesia. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 10, 327-340.
30. Lak, A., Shakouri Asl, S., & Maher, A. (2020). Resilient urban form to pandemics: Lessons from COVID-19. Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 34, 502-509.
31. Leykin, D., Lahad, M., Cohen, R., Goldberg, A., & Aharonson-Daniel, L. (2016). The dynamics of community resilience between routine and emergency situations. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 15(1), 125–131.
32. Li, R., Richmond, P., Roehner, B. M. (2018). Effect of population density on epidemics. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 510, 713-724.
33. Litman, T. (2020). Pandemic-resilient community planning: Practical ways to help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from pandemics and other economic, social and environmental shocks. Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
34. Maguire, B., & Hagan, P. (2007). Disasters and communities: Understanding social resilience. The Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 22(2), 16-20.
35. Massaro, E., Ganin, A., Perra, N., Linkov, I., & Vespignani, A. (2018). Resilience management during large-scale epidemic outbreaks. Scientific Reports, 8, 1859.
36. Mayunga, J. S. (2007). Understanding and applying the concept of community disaster resilience: A capital-based approach. Summer Academy for Social Vulnerability and Resilience Building, 1(1), 1–16.
37. McMillen, H., Campbell, L. K., Svendsen, E. S., & Reynolds, R. (2016). Recognizing stewardship practices as indicators of social resilience: In living memorials and in a community garden. Sustainability, 8(8), 775.
38. Meerow, S., Newell, J. P., Stults, M. (2015). Defining urban resilience: A review. Landscape and Urban Planning, 147, 38–49.
39. Michel, S., Megerdoomian, K. (2015). Modeling community resilience for a post-epidemic society. Paper presented at the Conference on Computational Social Science Society of the Americas At, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
40. Mollalo, A., Vahedi, B., & Rivera, K. M. (2020). GIS-based spatial modeling of COVID-19 incidence rate in the continental United States. Science of Total Environment, 728(6), 13884.
41. Musavengane, R. (2019). Using the systemic-resilience thinking approach to enhance participatory collaborative management of natural resources in tribal communities: Toward inclusive land reform-led outdoor tourism. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 25, 45-56.
42. Nguyen, H. L., & Akerkar, R. (2020), Modelling, measuring, and visualising community resilience: A systematic review. Sustainability, 12, 7896.
43. Norris, F. H., Stevens, S. P., Pfefferbaum, B., Wyche, K. F., & Pfefferbaum, R. L. (2008). Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41, 127–150.
44. Ostadtaghizadeh, A., Ardalan, A., Paton, D., Jabbari, H., & Khankeh, H. R. (2015). Community disaster resilience: A systematic review on assessment models and tools. PLoS Currents Disasters, 7, 1-16.
45. Ostrowski T. M. (2014), Resilience in the light of research and theoretical reflection. In Sikorska, I., & Ostrowski, T. M. (Eds.), Health and Resilience. Jagiellonian: Jagiellonian University Press.
46. Pinchoff, J., Austrian, K., Rajshekhar, N., Abuya, T., Kangwana, B., Ochako, R., & Ngo, T. D. (2021). Gendered economic, social and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation policies in Kenya: Evidence from a prospective cohort survey in Nairobi informal settlements. BMJ Open, 11(3), e042749.
47. Pu, B., Qiu, Y. J. (2016). Emerging trends and new developments on urban resilience: A bibliometric perspective. Current Urban Studies, 4, 36–52.
48. Quinlan, A. E., Berbés‐Blázquez, M., Haider, L. J., & Peterson, G. D. (2016). Measuring and assessing resilience: broadening understanding through multiple disciplinary perspectives. Journal of Applied Ecology, 53(3), 677-687.‏
49. Rasanen, A., Lein, H., Bird, D., Setten, G. (2020). Conceptualizing community in disaster risk management. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 45, 101485.
50. Reimers, F. M., & Schleicher, A. (2020). A framework to guide an education response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020. OECD, 14(2020), 2020-04.‏
51. Reyes R., Ahn R., Thurber, K., & Burke, T. F. (2013). Urbanization and infectious diseases: General principles, historical perspectives, and contemporary challenges. In Challenges in infectious diseases (pp. 123-46). Cham: Springer.
52. Saja, A. M. A., Goonetilleke, A., Teo, M., & Ziyath, A.M. (2019). A critical review of social resilience assessment frameworks in disaster management. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 35, 101096.
53. Tackenberg, B., & Lukas, T. (2019). Resilience through social cohesion: A case study on the role of organizations. In Resilience in social, cultural and political spheres (pp. 323-344). Cham: Springer.
54. Tambo, J. A., & Jonathan, M. (2018). Differential impacts of conservation agriculture technology options on household income in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ecological Economics, 151, 95-105.‏
55. Timmerman, P. (1981). Vulnerability, resilience and the collapse of society: A review of models and possible climatic applications. Institute for Environmental Studies, Canada: University of Toronto.
56. Wang, Y., Monteiro, C., & Popkin, B.M. (2002). Trends of obesity and underweight in older children and adolescents in the United States, Brazil, China, and Russia. American Journalof Clinical Nutrition, 75(6), 971–977.
57. Wilkinson, A., Sun, J. M., & K Mowbray, P. (2020). Employee voice in the Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 58(4), 471-484.
58. World Health Organization. (2020). Novel Coronavirus (‎2019-nCoV)‎: Situation report, 3. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/
59. Wulff, K., Donato, D., & Lurie, N. (2015), What is health resilience and how can we build it? Annual Review of Public Health, 36(1), 361-374.
60. Zhou, C., Su, F., Pei, T., Zhang, A., Du, Y., Luo, B., ..., & Xiao, H. (2020). COVID-19: challenges to GIS with big data. Geography and sustainability, 1(1), 77-87.