Analysis and evaluation of urban socioeconomic dimensions

Introduction. Following any war, the destruction of cities causes severe damage to the lives of citizens, so urban planning and accelerating the process of renovation and development of a city is the priority of every country after the war, in order to reduce the damage caused by war. Since then, citizens can resume their normal living in their hometowns. The process of urban renovation and development takes a long time, and the main urban indicators should be regularly evaluated in different dimensions to find out whether the living environment has improved and the preset urban goals have been achieved. Materials and methods. In this study, the process of renovation and development of the city of Homs was analyzed by evaluating the pre-selected social and economic indicators. The sign test and the Wilcoxon test were used to evaluate and compare the indicators before and after the war. Results. The results of the research show that the null hypothesis of this research was rejected with a z-value of –3.137916 and a p-value of 0.002 in respect of the social dimension. Also, the zero hypothesis of this research is rejected in the economic dimension according to the results of the Wilcoxon test. The results show that the z-value is equal to –2.075 and the p-value is equal to 0.038, which is less than 0.50 and, hence, insignificant. The rejection of the null hypothesis and the large number of negative indicators in the social dimension indicate that the process of renovation and development of the city of Homs is very slow after the war and the city has not been able to approach the desired stable condition. Conclusions. This research has found that only 11 indicators out of 45 improved in the process of renovation and development of the city of Homs after the war if compared to the pre-war period. In fact, more than 75 % of selected indicators were negative, and this shows the slow pace of urban renovation and development with an emphasis on the sustainable city of Homs.