Tehran City and Social Capital Dualism: A Neighborhood Case Study

Iran has transformed after the second world war due to volume, speed and diversity of contextual and physical changes, structure and historical function of city. The evolutions of the past half century caused the city of Tehran to have two different urban spaces which are called in the present paper as traditional and modern communities . The residential section of old neighborhoods of the city of Tehran( like traditional fabric of Kashanak neighborhood ) is usually very dense, without considerable open space while having a very homogenous and coherent face. Settlement of all these components along the bypasses and winding roads created a system with historical identity in which a part of the lost past of Tehran can be found. The present research is conducted to study social capital in Kashanak neighborhood of the city of Tehran . social capital is intangible, and cannot be seen or touched. Hence it can only be measured by reference to those features of society with which its development is associated, i.e. the process which results in its accumulation. There is general agreement that this process includes features of society such as association (both formal-via group membership and work colleagues, and informal-via networks of friends , neighbours and family), engagement in community-based activities , community cohesiveness and thick and thin trust. These features of society may be considered the building blocks of social capital and used as proxies for its measurement. Bonding social capital refers to the social capital generated and shared by members of a relatively homogenous group. Bridging social capital refers to the social capital generated and shared through interconnections between heterogeneous groups. The concepts of bonding and bridging social capital contain elements of norms of behaviour and societal structures in that they indicate both a tendency for people to act in a certain manner (the norm of tending toward bonding or bridging links) and the capacity to do so (the fact of having friends or contacts either locally-bonding link,or externally-bridging links). The level and nature of social capital in each town was assessed through a self- completion questionnaire. A Hundred persons of each community were selected randomly for collection of data. The questionnaire included 22 variables designed to measure aspects of social capital formation covering informal association, formal association, social cohesiveness and engagement , trust, Bridging Social Capital and Bonding Social Capital. Comparative scores for both communities on each of the six factors were generated by calculating a score for individual cases based their responses to the variables included in each factor and then aggregating these scores for cases in each community . Multivariate variance analysis method has been used to compare the two communities. A self-completion questionnaire was designed in which we included questions that had been used to measure social capital in traditional and modern communities.We also grouped questions in factors similar .Responses to the questionnaire were assessed via measurement on a ?ve-point Likert scale . The research hypothesis states that social capital in traditional community indicates a higher level of modern community . Questions were included to reflect perceptions on informal association , formal association, cohesiveness and engagement, social trust, Bonding Social Capital, and Bridging Social Capital. Responses to questions were rated on ordinal scales and recoded where necessary so that a higher score represented a higher level of social capital . A calculation of general social capital (GSC) to reflect the total level of social capital in each community was made simply by aggregating the scores of individual cases on each factor. The difference between the communities statistically significant in relation to informal association with friends ad neighbours and differences between the two