Environmental Indices and Their Role in Sustainable Urban Development in Tehran Metropolis

Abstract

Nowadays, Most of the cities, especially metropolises of developing countries are engaged with environmental issues like air and water pollution, waste increase and etc., that lead to the environmental destruction. Meanwhile sustainable urban development, provides the balance between development and the environment, and supplies the current generation needs while keep its eyes on the next generation rights and respects it. This survey goes through the conceptual and theoretical sustainable urban development, and the environmental index situation in Tehran, as a metropolis, based on the available data. The study's method is a combination of documentary-librarian methods and data and available studies analyzing. Regarding that sustainable urban development indexes can be divided into environmental, social and economic indices, environmental indexes is one of the most important sustainable development indexes. The data shows that based of environmental indexes, high rate of air pollution and energy consumption and high rate of waste production, Tehran is away far from the desirable sustainable development situation. Generally, the results of this study imply that Tehran is not in an acceptable situation based on the environmental index ( air pollution , waste management , green and public space per- capita , clean transportation, energy consumption , water consumption , housing and patrimonial quality , sound pollution and etc.).