Effects of Development Projects on the Surrounding Urban Textures (Case Study: Shahrekord Twin Towers)

Introduction Urban development projects have special economic, social, and environmental effects on urbna textures. Increasing high-rise building activities in recent years has raised concerns that can be leaded into serious problems and crises. Fundamental issues related to the high-rise buildings are including (1) economic effects: the impact of tall buildings on building density and land use and cost of construction of high-rise buildings. (2) social effects: a lack of consistency with adjacent cultures, lack of neighborhood life and community groups, ethnic, national and racial impacts of high-rise buildings, non-compliance with high population density and households, security issues, disaster problems such as earthquake, wind, fire, and identity issues. (3) Climate and environmental effects: air and environment pollution and also the light and the sun status. Shahrekord Twin Towers, in Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari province, is under construction in the northwest Basij square on Shariati Street in an area of 6 thousand square meters. The project will be built on 25 floors. Locating the project in one of the most crowded city streets (Shariati), in the proximity to the largest and most important hospitals  the health clinic, medical center, and sports complex faced the construction project with many problems. There is also intense discontent among residents. Thus, this study is to define present problems of the project and reduce its harmful effects in the future.  Methodology This is an applied research with descriptive and analytical method. The data have been collected through the survey documents and field studies using a questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS and Amos software. The study population is all the residents in the surrounding areas of the project. According to the Cochran formula with unknown study population and 95% confidence level, the sample size in this study was 96. Reliability of the 96 completed questionnaires using Cronbach's alpha was confirmed in 0.767.   Results and conclusion The present study is to evaluate the effects of the construction of Shahrekord Twin Towers.  According to the study objectives, four hypotheses were examined. About every four hypotheses we answer the following questions: 1- Does the construction of the Twin Towers lead to economic changes in the region? 2- Does the construction of the Twin Towers lead to physical changes in the region? 3- Does the construction of the Twin Towers lead to environmental changes in the region? 4- How much the construction of the Twin Towers can lead to social changes in the region? The effectiveness of each variable was tested using structural equation modeling and Amos software. The outcome variables showed that p values for the variables are less than 0.05, it is meaningful and acceptable. Therefore, the hypotheses of this research are confirmed. We conclude that even in the earlier stages of the project before its completion, it leads to higher prices of land and property in surrounding districts, decline in production, and dissatisfaction of business people due to lower sales. Implementation of the project will also lead to the loss of esthetic values in urban landscape in the region. It also greatly reduced available lands around the region, particularly for hospital and made heavy traffic on the busy streets. However, this project at the current location improved the renewal and improvement of the abandoned areas in the vicinity. Construction of the project at the current location greatly increased air pollution, destroying the image of the city, leading to a lot of pollution for residents. Nevertheless, construction of the project has positive aspects. It increased tourism in the region and reduced migration to big cities because of its features. Conclusion The Twin Towers project is now under construction with unsuitable site selection, without planning and regarding urban design. The project is enormous heterogeneity within the context of a small town. A heterogeneous glass with high-rise building in the middle of a small town make the surrounding buildings look like slums, while one of the reasons for building this tower is to be a municipal and provincial symbol. It can be suggested to supply the required infrastructure in the region, improve pathways development of urban transportation networks to reduce traffic load, finance the residents of the project due to financial problems, predict how to design garbage collection and reduce environmental impacts, forecast pedestrian access to the Tower, supply the appropriate number of parking around the tower in a suitable location for outside parking, strengthen the role of Shahrekord in the tourism and hospitality services with an emphasis on urban capacities.