Content analysis and comparison of urban environment challenges in Iran and the world during the recent fifteen years (1380-1394h- 2000-2014s)

Introduction

Environment is a Pervasive platform for all the living creatures, which is exposed to multiple challenges, especially with the increasing rate of urbanization; levels and dimensions of these threats have increased. Scientific activities in a publishing form such as reports and articles is an accepted procedure between various scientific fields. Documents, reports and articles are suitable tools to measure and analyze environmental concerns and challenges among different nations. These various challenges are depending to urban living experience, culture and citizenship reactions in the different countries and nations. In the meantime, the attention to the situation of environmental challenge is very important, according to the circumstances of any environment. Today; these challenges are global in scope, and the hypothesis such as Urban Environmental Transition has introduced for the formation and persistence of environmental challenges. Continued international sessions and global reports from different aspects are symptoms of these notifications. However, Scientists have a crucial role to enhance human technical knowledge about this field. Peer review and academic articles are one of the main tools of them, which have a high reliability. Periodical review and content analysis of scientific data sets can clarify the strengths and weaknesses of scientific research about the urban environment. Orientation focuses on the environmental challenges are also given to this way.

Materials & Methods

This study examines the current situation in Iran and the world's environmental challenges over the last fifteen years from the beginning of 1380 until the end of 1394h and the beginning of 2000 until the end of 2014s. At first; it reviews comparative literature in Iran and the world. For the evaluation of Iran's environmental challenges and global scale, 2627 environmental articles from a total of 9791 articles have been studied between 24 scientific journals in Persian and English language. 11 international journals were chosen as basic Journal, which has been introduced at MIT University in website platform as a name of Environmental Strategies for Cities to meet the challenges of the urban environment. Among these journals, 5 journals were selected as a final an English-language international journals besides of 19 Persian environment journals. Methods this study was a quantitative content analysis technique with an analytical approach. Content analysis, is a technique commonly used in environmental research and allow researchers to have a more understanding process of gathering the information. In this study, the unit of data collection was environmental articles, and the unit of analysis was environmental subjects. Analytical approach has been selected to remove descriptive aspects to the analysis. Then, according to topic-oriented approach papers, all papers have been studied and the key topics of each of them were categorized, by American Planning standards in the environmental sector.

Results & Discussion

Findings of The study indicated Twenty-one environmental head topics. Due to the number of their significant environmental articles, environmental issues had various scopes for research. The first six environmental head topics in the Iranian journal were the “health, sanitation, solid waste” “management and planning environment” “pollution and environmental health ““water” “lakes, rivers and river valleys” and “ forests and protected areas”. In contrast, six head topics of international articles were “climate”, “management, environmental planning” “Sustainability” “Health, wastewater, solid waste” “urban ecology” and “pollution and environmental health”. In Persian articles, head topic's environment of “water” was the most frequently subject in journals and head topics of sustainable development; energy and wetlands have been less emphasized. From comparison approach and quantitative viewpoint, in spite of slowly increasing number of local papers, there is significant capacity in this field. On the other hand, from qualitative dimension, in the international Articles attention to both green and brown agendas, environmental challenges could be observed, whilst in local papers, concentration was on the brown Challenges of the urban environment. The primary priority of green agendas in international journals and brown agendas in domestic journals reflects the gap and differences on the quality of environmental researches between Iran and world scale. Most percentages of environmental issues on initial six head topics revealed weaknesses in both environmental articles of nations.Table 1 and table 2 and Fig.1 and Fig.2 also show some main brief of analysis.
Table1: main head topic of urban environment issues in selecting Persian journals
Journals Name of Head Topic Rate Average of article


Persian Health, Wastewater, Solid Waste 1 18
Management and Planning Environment 2 17
Pollution and Environmental Health 3 17
Water 4 15
Lakes, Rivers and River Valleys 5 10
Forests and Protected Areas 6 6
Table2: main head topic of urban environment issues in selecting international journals
Journals Name of Head Topic Rate Average of article



International Climate 1 8
Management and Planning Environment 2 8
Sustainability 3 7
Health, Wastewater, Solid Waste 4 6
Urban Ecology 5 5
Pollution and Environmental Health 6 4


Conclusions

Nowadays; the environment has become a serious issue due to growing environmental concerns and changing human previous thoughts. Evaluation of scientific papers on environmental challenges, indicates a clear image of the current situation and determines future suited strategies. In general, the literature on environmental challenges inside and outside the country, according to first priority on common head topics like “sanitation and wastewater treatment ““management and environmental planning” and “environmental pollution and health” show the importance of the brown agendas in both sets. On the other hand, despite the attention to both brown and green agendas in the pattern of global; problems were focused just on brown challenges at the local level. In other words, there were no articles on the research field of environmental justice or low carbon cities regardless of its origin and numbers of researches around sustainability are few. Moreover, there are some shortages for studying some brown challenges like energy and wetland's issues. However, changing this current situation requires a shift thinking of the number and scope of the environmental research and revising of environmental studies around the country.