Assessment of Indices of Social Sustainability by Using

Introduction Since the beginning of the 21st century, sustainable development does not mean only considering the environmental and economic dimensions, but also social issues in achieving sustainable development has opened a new window in front of us. Social stability is an essential component of sustainable development that has received special attention from politicians and planners alike. Because social issues are inevitable in the process of urban planning and is an integral part of urban design, one can explore and identify the affective ways of social issues by determining the dimensions of social sustainability. In other words, the dimensions of social sustainability can be seen as one of the most important and key tools used in urban planning and policy. Moreover, the breadth, complexity and diversity of social sustainability indicators and their role in society in terms of these indicators and performance implications will be considered, each value is obviously different from the other. Material & Methods As one of the integral elements of the planning process, assessment has always been at the center of attention. After setting the overall objectives of the planning and seeking different alternatives, the assessment is conducted so that through the comparison of various options in terms of their competency, the optimum alternative is selected. Multi-criteria evaluation is one of these methods which allows for analyzing and presenting all available data about alternatives based on different and multidimensional criteria. These assessment methods might be quite quantitative (e.g. the method of objective achievement matrix), qualitative (e.g. System Analysis Methods) or a combination of both (e.g. environmental impact analysis methods) (Zebardast 2009: 19). This paper assumes non-uniform weights of the indicators of social stability and measures with the aim of identifying and assessing social sustainability indicators. To achieve this goal, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) and the Delphi method to determine the weight of each of the indicators of social sustainability has been used to explain. The research method in this investigation is descriptive – analytic due to its practical approach and aim. The method of data collecting was based on library research and documents and interviews with some experts. The concerning criteria, sub-criteria and factors in this study are mutually dependent and interconnected, since in problems demanding such mutual interconnections the use of analytic hierarchical process lead to a wrong result. Therefore, we use the analytic network process because through such analysis there would be no problem in output, even though there is no interconnection among criteria. So regarding the existence of interconnections between social sustainability criteria, we have used the ANP, resulting a more proper outcome. Discussion of Results & Conclusions According to the evaluation criteria used for network analysis, we concluded that equal opportunities (EO =0.136), the security objective (OS = 0.129) and social interaction (SI =0.107), respectively, have the maximum weight as the most effective factors influencing social stability. By accepting the social sustainability as an inseparable part of achieving sustainable development, the social justice could be considered as the most important and effective index, leading to sustainable development. In fact, sustainable development requires social justice in order to make human resources more hopeful and optimist to the process of development. Therefore, social justice is the key concept to arrive at sustainable development. Keywords