تحلیل و بررسی انقباض شهری با تأکید بر نقش مهاجرت ( مطالعه موردی: شهر بروجرد)

Background and Purpose: Urban shrinkage essentially represents a reconceptualization of previous scientific terminologies found in earlier discourses, including terms such as deurbanization, urban decline, urban blight, urban decay, obsolescence, population loss, and urban poverty. Researchers often define a shrinking city as an urban area that experiences economic stagnation, population loss, a high unemployment rate, and social and demographic problems. The objective of this research is to analyze and examine urban shrinkage with a particular emphasis on the role of migration as a contributing factor.
Methodology: This research is applied in purpose and descriptive-analytical in method, based on direct observations and questionnaire distribution. The primary spatial unit consists of the urban neighborhoods of Borujerd city, categorized into five clusters: marginalized neighborhoods, annexed villages, affluent neighborhoods, pre-planned housing complexes, and the city's core formation neighborhoods. According to the statistics, the cluster of pre-planned housing complexes was excluded as it does not contain residents who are emigrants from the city. Data collection utilized both documentary and field methods. For the section on the causes of citizen emigration from Borujerd, a citizen questionnaire was designed using a Likert scale. Given the questionnaire's design for investigating emigration causes from Borujerd, Cronbach's alpha test was employed within the SPSS software environment; the obtained Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.82 confirms the questionnaire's reliability at a very good level. The questionnaire's validity was verified by specialized professors. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used. Given that the data collection was survey-based and the variables under investigation were of a nominal-ordinal nature, and considering that no statistics are registered regarding the number of emigrants, we employed non-probability purposive sampling. Furthermore, to determine the sample size in a manner consistent with scientific foundations for survey research, we deemed it reasonable to base the sample size on the completion of 100 questionnaires. For the analysis of the questionnaire data, we utilized the one-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) test within SPSS software.
Findings and Discussion: The findings revealed that, considering the F-statistic value and significance level greater than 0.05, there was no significant difference in mean scores among privileged neighborhoods, marginalized informal settlements, historical urban core areas, and annexed former villages regarding variables such as: greater employment opportunities outside the city, lack of job opportunities in Borujerd, absence of banking facilities like loans, inequality in amenities and services between Borujerd and the provincial capital as well as other destination cities, shortage of sports infrastructure and facilities, difficulties in family formation for oneself or children, presence of greater personal freedoms in larger cities, insufficient governmental institutions and organizations in the origin city, inefficient performance of city officials, and government resolutions and plans favoring the provincial capital - with all respondents across different neighborhoods expressing consensus about the impact level of these factors on migration from Borujerd.
Conclusion: Migration leads to sustained population decline in Borujerd city as the primary indicator of urban shrinkage, with residential neighborhoods gradually emptying and rising vacancy rates of houses, while population decrease reduces demand for services causing business closures and intensifying migration through a vicious cycle, as migration intensification fragments urban space where marginalized neighborhoods, annexed villages and historic urban cores face depopulation while pre-planned townships and privileged areas gain population, driving internal relocation between neighborhoods or to other cities as middle classes increasingly opt for inter-city migration with significant numbers from Borujerd's historic core neighborhoods relocating to Tehran. The long-term effects of migration on urban shrinkage include population aging, decline in the workforce, closure of small businesses, reduced capital attraction, increased vacant and abandoned properties, decline in infrastructure and urban facility quality, proliferation of unsafe neighborhoods, closure of schools and educational centers, reduced quality of healthcare services, diminished public transportation, social fragmentation, decreased social vitality, increased psychological problems, abandonment of agricultural lands, expansion of marginalized settlements, and environmental degradation