Definition of Participative Urban Design Paradigm in The Community-led Urban Regeneration Based on Islamic Realism Philosophy

During the evolution of the urban regeneration approach, attention to social participation has led to formation of community-Led urban regeneration. Social participation can improve social capital, sense of place and responsibility to the place, through community-Led urban regeneration process. As the art of qualifying public spaces, its activities’ platform is urban environment and space, given the social, ethnic and historical features of citizens and structural and physical requirements, urban design tends to make the urban space more at the service of the people and in this regard, in addition to the welfare of citizens, meet their emotional and psychological needs. Urban design focused on making places for people and the process of creating a better place for people. The main emphasis in urban design issues such as creating a place of interdisciplinary, public areas, group activities, interactive creation and social justice and civil participation. needs of public participation in improvement of cities status is not unknown. Based on the views of the theorists, social participation can also create social sustainability. Since the sufficient skills and knowledge are needed to take apart in decision making process with the aim of social participation in local development projects and urban spaces designing, it seems that the lack of educating and training required was due to failure social participation during urban regeneration projects. Due to the nature of this approach and intervention platform, the position of education must be clarified in this process. There are many instruments to use during this intervention, but the rule of education is not clarified in this process, yet. Disregarding for the role of residents who live in urban neighbors is the most important reason of failure to implement urban space design development projects with high quality in Iran. It is the result of lack of planning to attract participation neither teaching them, not to learn all people with the aim transferring experiences and to make appropriate methods to paradigm shift in the participants, on the other hand there are not enough awareness and expertise in the urban manager groups and the administrative experts. In addition, it is necessary to produce conceptual framework for educating, training and learning citizens based on creed, native culture and identity of Islamic-Iranian society. This study includes specifying the position of social education during common participation attraction process and also making clear the theoretical and philosophical basis of Islamic Ideology about social education with emphasized on the role of community and participation concept in the procedure of urban designing. Gathering data has been done with questionnaire, interview, and field study. This study is applied research and done with descriptive and analytical methods. The results show there is a significant positive relationship between social education and sustainable urban regeneration. It is therefore suggested that educating residents will be set as the target of sustainable urban regeneration plans as a pivotal element of urban designing and making decision. Finally, the results of study representative that based on Islamic realistic philosophy, the paradigm is educating and training from society and for society are the main purpose. The conclusion shows that educating and training to society have no expected results. The values of this society have been specified based on anthropology. With the aim of explaining the relationship between education-training and urban regeneration and also defining its role and position in the community-led urban regeneration process, in this study by using qualitative analysis and content analysis method, theories have been reviewed to compose the community-led urban regeneration through training. The results of study contain investigating the participatory approach as a designing paradigm will lead to the success of urban regeneration projects and there is an important issue that social training and social educating are not only instruments to achieve urban regeneration objectives but those should be considered as executables to attract citizen’s participation. In addition, the training and educating will be assumed as means to achieve enabling, empowering, capacity building and institutionalization for urban projects beneficiaries. In this study the theories are divided into two categories based on their nature. The first one contains the viewpoints about the relation between education and participation in common. And the other on contains the theories that includes philosophy of education in Islamic-Realism. According on research findings it is obvious that over the past decade, along with changing the view of environmental sustainability to social sustainability, education and training are implemented to building capacity and social empowerment with aim to increase social capacity. These all lead to increase social participation and common abilities to take apart in local development and urban space designing. The citizens who are educated and trained enough, are ready to participate in decision making, designing and implementation of urban regeneration projects. Finally, community-led urban regeneration can happen with the building capacity through education and training continuously. Likewise, in order to Islamic thought’s nature about social education and training and social behaviors in the community, defining the aims, principles, methods and contents of social education and training affected Islamic thought organize the main purposes of this study. The method of this research as its purpose is decisive and based on its social science nature is descriptive. With the purpose to define attribute of social education and training affected Islamic theology, two viewpoints are compared: Islamic Realistic philosophy and its Etebariat theory versus some theories about participation in urbanism and urban planning those have been based on social education and training. There are hierarchical aims based on Islamic philosophy and in accordance with these goals, the characteristics of education to the community have been explained. In general, despite the differences in the titles used to explain the theoretical and philosophical foundations of each of the two views there are similarities in the general orientation of explaining the role of education and training to the community to strengthen social responsibility and participation in both perspectives. As a final conclusion, it should be said that conscious participate urban design requires education, which should be explained in the context of the Islamic worldview and the principles of education in Islam. Based on case study surveying it revealed the education and training can improve the achievements and participation goals. During the implementation of this project tradesman refused to participate at the first, then, after some negotiation and explanation about the probable rewards and especially receiving their opinions about the priorities in infrastructure, space design, urban furniture, planting, facades, shades and materials for pedestrian flooring, they decided to be a part of this project.