The Ph.D. research and supervision process passes through different momentums of ups and downs, demotivation, and stress. Unexpected situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and its considerable influence on daily life and their working situation and research process, put new pressures on Ph.D. students. This study aims to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral motivation, the supervisions' strategies, and the importance of supervisors in helping students tackle demotivation and stress situations. In this study, we conducted an online survey, including open-ended and Likert scale questions, distributed among the doctoral students and interviews with supervisors at Malmö University. According to the survey result, the pandemic has affected the doctoral students' research methodological process, communication frequency and efficiency with their supervisors, access to the office and laboratory, and motivation to write and finish their doctoral thesis. Stress, new life and family priorities, the uncertainty of fieldwork and research methods, isolation, skepticism about the importance of their research, and less connection with supervisors and peers have been mentioned as their reasons for demotivation. In addition, the survey results showed that most respondents emphasized the importance of the supervisors' role in their motivation. The message from this study is that the clarity of feedback, setting realistic goals, time management, mutual understanding, caring and support, flexibility and availability, regular and informal meetings, and positive attitudes are essential factors in doctoral supervision under stressful situations. The findings pinpoint the most efficient supervision strategies during challenging situations like the pandemic, which can be lessons for future similar events. However, the results also addressed the students' different needs and the importance of awareness and attention to the students' differences under supervision and mentoring.

Since the 1980s, a wide range of physical and non-physical interventions, including megaprojects and flagships to small-scale projects and temporary usage, are prescribed as catalysts for urban regeneration. The strategy of utilizing urban catalysts as a tool for urban renewal has been encouraging by many city authorities through specific subsidization and privileges. However, there is no correct and precise definition of the tools and the qualities they should provide as their impacts. Besides, some criticize the catalytic projects due to their unsustainable, unjust, and destructive consequences.  This paper intends to provide a more comprehensive definition of urban catalysts by reviewing the existing literature. The research has been done through a deductive and inductive approach to reach the principal dimensions and criteria for catalytic projects. It uses a series of potential projects and interventions in the City of Tehran (16 projects and practices) as case studies to check the dimensions and criteria and the quality of each project as catalysts. The quality of the selected case studies was ranked through expert judgment and checklist method. The findings show the cases' rank on how their catalytic impacts comply with sustainable development goals. According to the results, seven criteria (environmental sustainability, context-based development, pattern making, branding, social quality of life, economic prosperity, and market adaptability) are essential to ensure the sustainability of catalytic impacts of catalyst projects.

Smart cities providing a large amount of data and information in different dimensions make the complicated process of impact assessment and management of megaprojects feasible. The management and control of megaprojects as costly, long-term, and large-scale developments are critical to their success. In addition, they can facilitate data management in smart cities as they usually use new and innovative technologies, and can provide the integrable data. This chapter tries to propose a framework for megaprojects’ management in smart cities via reviewing the dimensions and the existing data categories and domains in smart cities to enable the megaprojects to smartly react to the risks; smartly manage the energy, service and space usage; and smartly control their footprint. Thus, the concept of smart megaprojects is introduced, and the related challenges in safety and security are discussed.

The recent generation of megaprojects – defined as extremely large-scale investment projects includes mixed-use developments based on public–private partnership. Despite the benefits estimated as the result of megaprojects, many of the projects lead to social and economic challenges resulting from the missed and unanswered conflicts with their stakeholders. As power structure affect fundamentally on the definition and formation of megaprojects, these challenges can be discussed through related power theories. Some cities try to reduce the conflicts by involving the community during the planning process. South Waterfront redevelopment project, in Portland Oregon, is an example of a megaproject in which various stakeholders and the related communities were involved. This paper studies the conflicts over South Waterfront’s development and explains how the project addressed them. It uses the “three-dimensional view of power” theory to discuss the different ways in which power is exercised in planning and construction of megaprojects. The content analysis method is used and the data gathered through deep interview and related reports. It concludes that community involvement in the project led to some public and stakeholder’s benefits. Also, it discusses in which ways different stakeholders usually exercise their power to get their interests in megaprojects.

Limitations of urban constructions in the form of rules and regulations with the aim of controlling city physicaldevelopment is the product of city development plans and documents. Actually, construction rules and regulationsin a metropolis like Tehran is the tool of performing urban development plans and development process in shorttermurban projects and long-term development plans is controlled by means of these rules and regulations.Therefore, how these rules and regulations are performed is a decisive factor in achieving goals and prospects ofurban development plans. Quantity and quality of construction regulations in Tehran from the first comprehensiveplan approved in 1970 to the strategic-structural plan in 2007 was changed along with the evolution of generalurban developments and special development policies in Tehran. Also, necessity of updating rules and regulationsof urban development is considered according to lack of full performance or low performance of many of the rulesand regulations of previous plans. A major part of challenges about non-implementation of these regulations canbe studied in the form of anomalies of constructional violations. This research analyzes and evaluates the wayof performing these regulations and status of constructional violations with the goal of analyzing challenges ofperforming rules and regulations of urban development in Tehran metropolis using descriptive-analytical method.Hence, four time intervals: the interval between performing regulations of first comprehensive plan of Tehran andfinancial self-sufficiency of municipal, the interval between implementing density sales policy and modifyingregulations of Tehran, the interval between performing Amendment of planning regulations of Tehran andannouncing the rules of detailed and comprehensive plan of Tehran and after that are evaluated. Also, causes ofcreation of constructional violations and their consequences in the failure of urban development plans were analyzedand the results demonstrate that the factors such as physical field and limitations and natural tendencies of urbandevelopment, underlying society and economy of city, defects of construction rules and regulations and inefficienturban management system are the most important causes of constructional violations in Tehran metropolis.

Megaprojects as extensive investment projects are increasing recently in large and metropolitan cities in Iran. The projects, mostly based on public-private partnership, are defined to stimulate urban development or provide necessary facilities and infrastructure. They are considered as tools to promote the city conditions at national and international levels. However, some theorists argue the negative consequences of the projects while explaining the risky, problematic, and deceiving side of the megaprojects. Many megaprojects have been constructed in Mashhad. The city, as a destination for many pilgrims and tourists, and a hub for commercial and industrial activities in the east of Iran, has considerable potentials for development and competitiveness. Mashhad’s municipality encourages the urban projects based on public-private partnership in various ways due to its dependence on the revenues of construction work. While the projects are considered to provide better and modern services to facilitate, it seems that they have had a reverse effect by the saturation of built-up areas and commercial spaces in Mashhad. This paper tries to assess the effectiveness of megaprojects in Mashhad and their compatibility with urban context through sustainability assessment of the projects.Megaprojects are considered as urban catalysts according to the neoliberalism ideology. The recent generation of the projects is mostly brownfield developments related to tourism and sport facilities based on the public-private partnership approach. The globalization, regional competitiveness, and privatization along with the technological improvement have led to the boom of mega and large-scale projects in cities.Megaprojects may result in the provision of public spaces, services or infrastructure improvement. However, the economic prosperity which the projects usually seek are incompatible with the local economy and may hurt it. They also change the physical identity and the existing urban structure while damaging the social capital with social segregation and exclusion. In addition, compared to the normal projects, the projects have considerable environmental footprints.2. MethodologyFocusing on megaprojects in Mashhad, the present study analyzes the effectiveness of megaprojects through the concept of sustainability circles. The concept assesses the sustainability through four dimensions: economic prosperity, social improvement, physical and cultural vitality, and environmental resiliency. The main approaches to the research are case study and survey. The case studies include large-scale renewal projects (Great Project of Shohada Square and Majd Project) and brownfield development (Sepad Tourism Zone). The survey which was administered to 387 persons including the experts, residents, and businesses in or surrounding the projects. Alpha Cronbach was used to test the reliability of the questionnaire. Based on the result of the coefficient (0.94), the questionnaire proved to be reliable.3. ResultsThe results show the megaprojects in Mashhad are far from the sustainability concept in almost all aspects. All projects have not been satisfactory which it can be related to opposites of these projects with previous owners, residents and tenants of their fields. Majd and Shohada projects have been shaped in distressed areas. Thus, they destroyed the buildings, and they changed the urban structure, the place identity, and the urban spaces in order to build modern areas. Also, the projects led to a lot of commercial and office areas which are more than the city demands, so many of which are not strong enough to result in economic prosperity. Sepad, in its reproduction has created some picturesque architecture, commercial and recreational complexes, and related public spaces. It has also addressed the demands of general pilgrims and tourists of Mashhad through widespread advertisements to attract the people’s attention. Thus, Sepad has been more successful than other megaprojects regarding the economic and physical aspects.4. ConclusionsMegaprojects in Mashhad are built to solve the challenges of distressed areas, mitigate traffic problems and provide modern services and infrastructure while they bring new challenges to the cities. The challenges could be related to the nature of megaprojects and their conflict with sustainable development to some extent. As the projects inherently seek for the place promotion and social improvement through the creation of new urban spaces and the attraction of the more affluent citizens, they may damage the historical identity and the social capitals as well. The projects include extensive environmental footprints and change in the urban ecological system. In addition, although the projects may promote some economic indexes of competitiveness, they may result in the degradation of the local economy which is relied on the urban assets and the residents’ skills.Generally, megaprojects in Mashhad have not taken appropriate steps to economic prosperity, social improvement, place promotion, and environmental improvement. But, their wrong orientation and the lack of long-term vision in economic development have led to the saturation of commercial spaces and intensification of the building recession in Mashhad. The projects, also, delimit the probable trend of investment in other industries and entrepreneurship activities. In addition, although the projects have provided transit station, public parking, and streets, they put multiple pressure on urban networks, infrastructure including power, water, and sewage systems by overloading the built-up area.In conclusion, megaprojects are inherently in conflict with sustainability and context-oriented development, especially, if they are defined based on an up-down decision-making process and lobbying exclusively between developers and urban managers.There are forces in urban development arena that cause the continuation of megaprojects in large and even smaller cities in Iran. Therefore, the practical way to control and limit the forces and eliminate the negative impacts of megaprojects, would be the empowerment and legalization of the system of control along with supervising mega and large-scale urban projects. Using the sustainability factors, economic prosperity, physical and cultural vitality, social improvement, and environmental resiliency are recommended as the conditions for the approval of megaprojects.

The majority of the Tehran metropolitan region’s problems are associated with building contraventions, which intensified after migration from other parts of the country to the region increased. This migration coincided with a boom in the construction sector and an increase in density selling by the Tehran municipality.

Because of the far-reaching consequences of this phenomenon and the Tehran municipality’s inefficient and inappropriate building controls, it is important to identify the reasons and origins of these contraventions so that solutions and mitigation measures can be developed.

After conducting a literature review and a questionnaire study, the reasons for the occurrence of one of the most common building contraventions, namely non-compliance with floor area ratio (FAR) regulations, are discussed in this paper. The questionnaire investigated the following indicators: level of awareness, violation of regulations to meet the minimum needs of housing (housing-related motives), violation of regulations with the aim of gaining financial profit (profit-making motives), owners’ income level, the experience and expertise level of the developers, and the quality of supervision and monitoring. The questionnaire was answered by 150 persons whose cases were under investigation in the municipality, and the results were utilized to evaluate each of the above-mentioned indicators. A Pearson correlation test and a path analysis were used to analyze the data. The study revealed that developers’ level of awareness is the most influential factor leading to non-compliance with FAR requirements. Following this indicator, income level and housing-related motives have the greatest influence on non-compliance with FAR regulations.