Earthquake fear in Tehran can be eradicated
Tasnimnews Agency: About the problem of distressed areas in metropolises, Seyyed Mohsen Tabatabaei, General Director of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Urban Management said: this problem can increase the amount of damages in time of crisis.
Regarding the measures of Tehran Renovation Organization in order to rehabilitate and renovate the distressed areas via people’s participation, he said, with all these interpretations, the problem of vulnerability of urban areas in Tehran still exists and it needs more serious attention. Tectonically, Tehran Metropolis is considered as earthquake-prone area and active faults of Central Alborz are located in Tehran. It is located on one of the world's most earthquakes prone and in Alps-Himalayan seismic belt path. If comprehensive management is not done in this field, we will consider serious crisis in future.
City like Tokyo, with comprehensive management, could overcome natural hazards, particularly earthquake. Earthquake fear in Tehran can be eradicated by passive defense training, training of economic dimension of crisis management, investing on retrofitting and rehabilitation of urban infrastructures and etc.
Distressed area is a vulnerable range of the city to natural hazards which it needs planning and coordinated participation in order to improve it. According to the statistics, there are sustainable and unsustainable 17000 hectares distressed areas in Tehran and the extent of unsustainable urban areas was 14792 hectares on the basis of approved indicators of Excellent Council of Urbanization and Architecture in Tehran and only 3268 hectares of it needs serious and coordinated participation because of having conditions of exhaustion (unsustainability, impermeability).
These areas, which most of them are in the Southern part of Tehran, include historical, central, marginal and informal settlements of different periods. Currently, about half of the residential context in Tehran is unsustainable against earthquake. Residents of these areas are mainly people with low income and they have less chance to absorb participation and capital guiding in order to renovate distressed areas.
