Spatial reflections of relocation of rural settlements, a case study of the village of "Hashadmil" in the central part of Dehleran

Dissertation for M.Sc degree

Department of Geography and Rural Planning

Abstract

The importance of various issues and issues of villagers and rural settlements, including the issue of moving villages is very important for a vast country like Iran with a variety of natural features (climate, topography) and social, cultural and ethnic differences along with a large number of sparsely populated and scattered rural settlements. Rural settlements due to their smallness and dispersion and their relative distance from each other, along with many problems such as lack of income, poverty and deprivation, deprivation of public facilities and services, intensifying the difference between urban and rural life, has accelerated the process of rural emigration and migration to urban areas, as a result of the evacuation of villages and agricultural lands remaining barren. The above problems have forced the experts and experts of rural issues to think more about the villagers. And for this reason, various plans and programs with different titles have been proposed, prepared and implemented to solve the problems of the villagers. Basically, in front of the question that "what policy or policies should be adopted in relation to the issues and problems of villages", there are different opinions and views, which can be divided into "theories against planning" and "theories in favor of planning" in order to prevent the gradual destruction of villages. Creating rural service centers and improving access are among the solutions proposed by the supporters of this point of view. There is another point of view that gives more importance to planned development and raising people's living standards than maintaining their physical structure. In this framework, the relocation and integration of villages is suggested in order to rationalize the government's investments and improve the welfare of the villagers. The basic premise of this view is that there is a significant relationship between economic growth and development and access to infrastructure facilities and services. The most important phenomenon discussed in this policy is the relocation of a number of villages, which is referred to as resettlement in the scientific literature.

In relation to resettlement, various divisions have been made so far based on different criteria such as mandatory or voluntary, planned or unplanned, with or without assistance, etc. One of these divisions is the division provided by SCAP. Based on this division, resettlement is divided into two major forms, planned and unplanned. Planned resettlement refers to those resettlements that are designed and implemented with a prior intention and purpose, and are mostly carried out with the aim of rural development policies and in order to raise the standard of living and welfare of the people. On the other hand, unplanned resettlement is resettlement that originates from reasons other than directly raising the standard of living and well-being of people, although they may also achieve this goal. Studies and experiences show that there is a close relationship between the reasons for displacement, consolidation and their success rate.                                                                                       

The main economic risks of the affected people are the loss of livelihood and income (from agricultural land, surface and underground water sources, fisheries, etc.) and changes in access and production resources. Loss of economic power along with failure of livelihood systems causes temporary, permanent and sometimes irreversible loss of living standards. Greater risks and uncertainty arise when various sources of livelihood are destroyed.

One of these plans that has been implemented to improve the lives of villagers in Dehlran city is the village relocation plan. The purpose of the implementation of this plan is for the villagers to have welfare, medical, health and educational facilities and services.

Given the importance of the above issue and its various consequences, the investigation and research on the consequences of the relocation of the present village of Mil has been carried out.

According to the field data and studies conducted, the basic factor of the relocation and transfer of the villagers has been the access to services. This relocation has had various consequences, some of these consequences have been positive, such as: provision of various services and facilities to the villagers, proximity to the road, proximity to the city center, suitable slope of the land, emergence of new job opportunities, etc.  .. But some of these consequences are negative, such as: loss of source of livelihood and previous employment, negative social changes, and increasing social gap between people and changing relationships between people.

General judgment regarding the positive or negative nature of this relocation is difficult considering its various dimensions, but what is clear is that most of the people in the village are satisfied with this relocation. In general, it can be said that although there has not been much study about the village relocation plan in this area, the satisfaction of the majority of the villagers with this relocation shows the relative success of this plan because this plan has achieved some of its most important goals, which is to provide services to the villagers.   

Introduction

The pattern of settlement in rural areas of Iran under the influence of natural factors and human elements (economic-social), shows various forms of lifestyles and livelihoods, one of the prominent aspects of which is the dispersion and division of rural settlements. There are more than 63 thousand villages in Iran, which shows the high dispersion of villages in Iran, of which more than 25 thousand villages have a population of less than 20 households. This inappropriate distribution is in such a way that in front of the few densely populated settlements, there are many scattered and sparsely populated settlements that are not able to provide the necessary services to their residents. It is clear that settlements have significant differences in terms of size, administrative status, physical patterns, social characteristics and economic functions. Most of the smallest residential centers have basic material infrastructure, insufficient level of public and private services, incomplete division of labor, etc. Often, the economic capacity of smaller centers is so limited that assigning a serious role in creating economic growth or the role of transferring rural development to these centers is a kind of fantasy. In fact, in most cases, it is relatively unrealistic to expect a production investment that has significant and immediate results, especially in small and scattered settlements. For this reason, setting up and implementing rural development programs in such a situation cannot follow a single model. Development must happen from the ground up. It is only after this development that a large majority of the population will benefit from economic developments. Rural development planning has often been synonymous with micro-planning and local focus on projects and villages. However, small and scattered villages mostly do not reach the dominant threshold value of economic and social services. And this prevents investment in these settlements. (Consulting Engineers DHV, 1371: 132)

One of the main reasons for rural backwardness and the unwillingness of the population to stay in rural areas is the lack of service facilities and the lack of easy access of this population to service centers. (Mati'i Langroudi, 2012: 24) From the perspective of rural planning, planning for the villages of Iran faces two major challenges, one is the inappropriate distribution of villages throughout the country, where the number of villages in the south and east of Iran is small, but the number of villages in the north and west is large. Another is the inappropriate distribution of the population in rural areas such that in some villages the population is 4000 people and in others it is less than 40 people. Improper distribution of the population has made planning difficult and we have to organize the villages in order to organize the management and provision of services at the country level in the form of a rural organization plan. In this case, the question arises whether the village has the appropriate demographic threshold to provide services? And is the provision of services economically justified?          (Kalantari, 1384: 12) One of the methods applied in order to provide services to the villagers and in order to organize scattered settlements, is the relocation plan of rural settlements (resettlement). This solution is mainly based on "economic saving" which is based on the perspective of rational planning and emanates from neoclassical economic thinking;  And improving people's living standards through the planned development of villages becomes important. Based on this theory, limited resources and inability to provide various service facilities, high costs and unprofitability of providing services to small villages are analyzed within the framework of the classical theory of enterprises. Therefore, he recommends providing services to large population centers. This approach is mainly focused on positive effects on physical aspects. And less deals with other effects of this strategy