Assessing the strategic plan of tehran by sustainable development approach, using the method of "Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)"

Nowadays, environmental assessment is increasingly used as part of the development activities; therefore, planning for development programs faces questions such as how to assess the sustainability of development programs in city scale and region scale. Due to environmental centralization, cities are naturally the first area which is invaded and this issue can be observed especially in the cities of the developing countries. This fact necessitates the assessment or improvement of the strategies so that the evaluation of the plans and strategies and their influence, especially environmental influence, has gained a significant importance and various methods and techniques are made for it. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is one of the acceptable methods for achieving the purposes of the sustainable development in which the administrative policies, plans and programs are assessed environmentally on a regular basis and in a comprehensive way and the sustainability of the approaches are examined. This paper aims at assessing the development strategies in one of these kinds of plans (Tehran strategic plan) and attempts to assess the development strategies of the mentioned plan by applying an assessment method and appropriate criteria. Doing the research revealed that the development strategies of Tehran strategic plan is in harmony with the sustainability of the environmental purposes even though the approach of this program towards some criteria shows some weak points and some strong points. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS