Journal of Spatial Planning
Year:2010 | Volume:14 | Issue:3 (67)|Papers Count:15

Introduction: The state model in Iran is unitary and centralized. In such a model, the political power is completely in the disposal of the central state, and it is given to other subpart units. Because of the existence of a unitary state, the space distribution of the political power is impossible. However, in the national and local levels, the state and popular organizations are selected by the people directly or indirectly. Rural boards are organizations, which due to executive and official decentralization manage the rural areas. However, it seems that rural boards do not have enough ability in the management of rural areas and are mostly the agents of state organizations rather than being independent, local and popular organizations. Therefor, the main question in this study is that why rural boards, in spite of expectations, do not have a significant role in the development of rural areas. In order to answer this question, satisfaction, knowledge and decision making abilities of the rural board members of two cities, namely Khoy (in West Azarbayjan province) and Noor (in Mazandaran province) were investigated.Materials and Methods: The methodology used in this study is descriptive-analytic and the instruments for gathering data are questionnaire and interview.Results and Discussion: After confirming the significant relationship among the variables, it has been indicated that the satisfaction variables of the role that the boards play have the most direct effect compared with knowledge and decision making abilities, and it can explain for 40 percent of the variables for rural development. Also the scope of the ability variable through the intervening variable of the board performance has the most effect on the rural development. However, generally spreading, 68 percent of the board members have announced that they have limited power in decision making, 57 percent have maintained that they do not have enough information about their responsibility and finally, 53 percent have declared that they are not satisfied with their job (it is worth mentioning that these variables were measured based on an index and the analysis of their causes has been explained in the study).Conclusion: Boards, as a symbol of political development, shoud be responsible for the management of local affairs and pave the way for the participation of the region residents in their own affairs. If boards enjoy an appropriate administrative position, they can make the scope of the governmental smaller, and through creating a flow structure help the people out of the complex beureucracy of the government. Boards as a symbol of democracy, for if they want to enjoy an appropriate position in the society, need cultural endeavour, which is a long-term process and cannot be done on a short-term basis.

With reference to the impact of information and communication technology on all aspects of today and the mergence of functional systems related to urban facilities in the virtual space, the present research tries to study the application of this virtual functional space in Iranian urban setting. For that reason, by reviewing the above issue in the 6th municipal zone of Tehran, we have focused on the share of virtual space in some of the selected area activities in this zone. Then the relations of the individual qualities of citizens were analyzed with due attention to the ratio of utilization of this space.The findings indicated that the virtual space yielded to some extened in the functional system dealing with financial services but this yield varies in different domains. Further individual characteristics/qualities such as the ratio of free time, level of computer knowledge and kind of accessibility have direct links with the virtual space utilization, which has nothing to do with gender characteristics or the level of education. In the case of suitable management, changes resulting from the emergence of virtual urban functional space have diminished the urban efficiency intensely in some of districts, while using its potentials in the urban development planning. It can be expected that this process would not intensify the opportunities by utilizing facilities due to gender and social differences.

Boundary is one of the essential concepts in political geography. But now, there are immoderate discussions about waste and unimportant boundary at globalization age. Discussion about the globalization and its effect on boundary has been expanded such that according to the experts especially of social sciences, considering the vast scientific and technological progresses, human family will very soon observe the elimination of boundary, land and identity separation and political world will change into a whole village. This article, using political geography approach tries to investigate the effect of globalization process the on the nature of boundary that means the formation of different aspects of globalization causes a lot transformation on different dimensions but these transformations can not effect the nature of boundary.Also the main reasoning of this article is that the nature of boundary is not effected by globalization process. In this way, there is an idea that the nature of boundary is something that comes from the beginning of the world's creation and based on the different interests of humans beings So for as humans live on the earth, boundaries will exist as well, and globalization, development of communications and etc do not disturb the place and role of boundaries in human association living.

The locating of general and social services in countries with many natural hazard and events have to foresee vulnerability patterns. Note to river basin, faults, soil studies and other environmental condition is the main activities to avoid of use lands and locations in public usages.Many of settlements (city and rural) are located in areas that threats with natural hazards same as earthquake, land slide and etc, but there is not any force to observe the standards and so in each events same as earthquake kills many people and lost more infrastructures.Tehran is the main Iranian city that lives with earthquake threat and there is not any serious look.This study by use of spatial analysis technique, clarifies general condition of Tehran seismic condition and use of spatial analysis to examine vulnerability of Economic institution in Tehran with focus on different bank branches in Tehran. Earlier census data (2006), more than 1500 branches data- spatial distribution, financial and human resources of different banks-are the main data for businesses' vulnerability.The survey showed that on average 80% of Tehran branches threat by 7-8Ms if an earthquake appears in Tehran.These results could be used by planners, policy makers and economic institution manager in order to determine the optimal investments in new branches locating and current branches resistant for earthquake disaster reduction.

In this study, the locality characteristics of educational spaces in Isfahan have been analyzed. Regarding to the studied standards, the present approach of this study is a "descriptive-analytical and survey" one. The statistical population of this study is 246 sample schools from a total of 841 ones in Isfahan City, which have been chosen to "interaction measurement between the present locality educational situations of schools with the location standards. In order to measure the interaction between the location standards and present locality situation, "one-tailed" ANOV A and "Tukey" tests was carried out. The research findings indicate that the relationship between educational spaces and compatibility uses and the climate and access is meaningful. There is a contrast relationship between educational spaces and the other location standards. There is also a meaningful difference between existing locality of educational spaces and the other location standards in general. Sum of the factors were mentioned above caused the educational spaces of Isfahan not to have the suitable compatibility, neighborhood and desirability.

Most of geographical phenomena studied in Geographical Information System (GIS); involve with some changes in time. Considering temporal changes is of prime importance in any GIS modeling. Such consideration enforces the development of Spatio-Temporal GIS that is one of the active research areas nowadays. These systems automatically apply the changes occurred on the data to GIS models and update them accordingly. One way to consider the changes is to use a suitable positioning method in a Spatio-Temporal GIS to be customized for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). This paper aims at identifying the most suitable positioning method for ITS in Iran and then aims at designing a Spatio-Temporal GIS Based on it.Positioning methods can be classified into four categories, namely; satellite positioning, Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), positioning on the vehicle and positioning through communication networks. Selecting a suitable method requires to identify the governing factors and their influence on positioning. Disregarding each of them may cause system restrictions.This paper evaluates the mentioned positioning methods and selects the most suitable method for Iranian territory. Based on the evaluations, Global Positioning System (GPS) was selected as the most suitable positioning method in Iran. The paper is then concentrated on developing a Spatio-Temporal GIS with emphasis on finding optimum path based on the shortest time-distance in real-time automatically. For this purpose, trajectories of vehicle motions were recognized by using spatial and aspatial information in the first step.Secondly, the position of the vehicle was navigated by GPS that was enhanced by a map-matching process. Finally, a real-time route finding algorithm was used for dynamic updating of planned vehicle trajectory.The proposed system has two invoations. The first is in selecting the most suitable positioning method for Iranian territory and the second is the introduction of a Spatio-Temporal GIS (STGIS) functionality for Dynamic guidance of the vehicles. Using STGIS, which is equipped with analytical capabilities, will provide more facilities for guiding vehicles. For example with STGIS, further extensions such as controlling autonomous vehicle for avoiding or leaving the banned regions are doable.This paper concentrated on determining the most suitable positioning method for intelligent transportation systems in Iran and then aims at designing a Spatio-Temporal GIS Based on it. The proposed system was entirely designed by authors successfully and has the abilities of editing, map matching and Spatio- Temporal route finding based on minimum distance and time. Other researchers can improve the system operations by using other Spatio- Temporal functions such as alarming vehicle entrance to prohibited zones.

Extensive land use and land cover changes in many urban areas of Iran, particularly Tehran as the capital, have resulted in many problems such as destruction of natural resources, environmental pollution, and uncontrolled urban growth over the past three decades. Rapid population growth and high migration rates to Tehran can be regarded as the main driving forces for suburb development and very fast land use/cover changes in this city. Mapping and analyzing the land use/cover changes are the first and important steps for management of land use changes. Possibilities of land use/cover change prediction, provided by the Markov chain, is a useful tool for effective control of land use changes. Because of these capabilities, this paper tries to evaluate usefulness of Markov chain and multi-temporal satellite data for land use /cover change mapping.Multi-temporal data included Landsat-MSS, Landsat-TM and Landsat- ETM, Which were acquired in 1976, 1988 and 2000, respectively. These data were rectified and co-registered to a 1/50000 topographic map of the area. The existing land use maps and aerial photos were used for selection of training samples. Maximum likelihood classification algorithm was then used for data classification. The Information classes included constructed areas, agriculture and orchards, parks and forests, bare lands and water bodies. Post-classification comparison was used for change detection and also land use change matrix production. The land use change matrix was used for land use change prediction by the Markov chain model.The results showed that the constructed areas have experienced a continuous growth during the periods of 1976-1988 and 1988-2000.Whereas, because of conversion in to constructed lands, agricultural lands and bare lands have been considerably decreased. The first order Markov chain was used as a predictor model for estimating the future changes. The observed land use change trend is in contrast with those of sustainability objectives, and requires a careful plan and action.

Spatial variation of the villages has led to occur a variety of economic productivity in rural areas; this is a way that in some rural areas of Iran economic activities has increased in different levels and with special features. One of the most striking characteristics is importation and involving modern technologies in the field of rural economic activities. The application of combine in agriculture of Iran can be titled transition route from traditional agriculture to commercial and mechanized agriculture, Furthermore it has caused formation and expansion of specific types of businesses including combine-holdering and related activities. Fars province due to its ability conditions in agricultural activities has been expanding the region favorable for the formation this activity. Since the creation and expansion of any economic activity in human settlements such as villages or cities will be accompany with positive and negative aspects and influence in all aspects of the community particularly in economy, therefore, the main issue in this study is economic impact due to development of this particular type of economic activity in those villages that constitute the majority of livelihoods. The nature of research is an exploratory study that utilizing scientific methodology, questionnaires and interviews, try to provide reasonable and logical answer to why and how the formation, development and effectiveness of combine-holdering activity influenced on the development process in rural areas. The results show that despite the obstacles and problems facing owners combine, this activity has had positive effects in promoting rural economic indicators in the area.

Hamoun, the most importance interior water resources of Iran located in this Sistan area. Water of Hamoun is the main natural resource of Sistan that the live is strongly depended to its availability. It is also observed that any changes of Hamoun water can caused several environmental impacts for area. The main objective of this study was to monitor the Hamoun water level changes based on time sires of satellite images, in order to examine the elements and cause of this hazardous event. In other for monitoring water level change detection over the Hamoun Lake, the time series of equal time satellite image taken by MSS, TM & ETM+ sensors in Landsat platform have been analysis as first step in this study. The outcome of this step were repossess base on field data collection (GCP, road height measurement, etc. for validity water level changes rate and reasons. The final results of the study indicated that the Hamoun water level has been change due to Hamoun sea bead uplifted and height changing. This is because of roads and bulwark construction as perpendicular line with direction of strong local wind. Superimposed of two satellite images between years 1976 and 2005 showed, the 10.6% (357 km2) of Iranian Hamoun Lake (Hamoun Hirmand) area which is appear as water area in year 1976, have not been recharge in same water level of year 2005. Furthermore, the area with length of 14 km (492 Km2) in south Hamoun Pozak was appeared as lake and wetland over the Image related to year 2005 (in Afghanistan side), which was marked as dry land in satellite image taken in year 1976.

Changes in temperature and precipitation can profoundly influence plant phonological status such as the date of the onset of green-up, the rate of biomass accumulation, and the onset and rate of vegetation senescence. For study of the satellite images are necessary vegetation index. One of the most used indices is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Several studies have investigated relationship between AVHRR-NDVI and climatic factors. For example, Diodato and Bellocchi assessed relation between NDVI and temperature and precipitation varability in Monte Pino region in Italy. This research results showes is high correlation between greenness and climatic pattern. In Iran, researchers assessed only relation between drought and NDVI. Shamsipour has been studied drought for the Kashan area using NDVI and VCI. The results of that study show that there are almost suitable relations between NDVI and VCI with meteorological methods. According to product of utilization NDVI and VCI, 2000 and 2001 years were with drought condition, and 2002, 2004 years were with wetness. In this study Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images and climatic data for 2006 were used in order to recognizing the climatic thresholds in Zagross pastures (low, middle and high density pastures). First, AVHRR images have implement geometric correction. Then, calculate NDVI index and maximum value composite (MVC) for any months. For climatic factors used from interpolation method (IDW, Kriging and CoKriging), and extracted errors for methods. Then, have selected optimum method for interpolation the climatic factors. The results of the classification of R2 between monthly Maximum Value Composite Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and interpolated climate factors (precipitation, temperature and relative humidity) shows the highest amount of R2 at 0.6478 in dense pastures. The lowest amount of R2 is at the low density pastures. Overall, Zagross pastures increase in density based on their height. However, precipitation increases and temperature decreases along with height. Also, Humidity has various distributions with height. In the low density pastures, NDVI rises up to 220 mm precipitation. Temperature threshold for vegetation growth is 4oC. The effect of 38-108mm precipitation and 18-21oC temperature is noticeable in increasing NDVI in middle density pastures. Temperatures higher than 12oe in winter increase NDVI. So, NDVI increases in 33-109 mm precipitation in high density pastures. The temperature from 16oe to 22oe increases NDVI. Overall, the results of this study showed that in all density pastures, the average relative humidity more than 40% increases NDVI. In addition, temperature plays the main role in increasing NDVI in winter. This factor is precipitation in summer. In springs, however, both precipitation and temperature have the same effects on NDVI.

High densities, mainly, in the opinion of settlement in different aspects are undesirable. The difficulty in defining high density illustrates the importance of a contextual approach that incorporates all relevant physical, social, cultural, economic, geographic, ecological, technological, and personal aspects of a situation. Perceived density is a person's subjective evaluation of population or built density; a measure that is related to environmental cues, culture and design. Perceived density may have little to do with the actual measured density. By using the concept of perceived density, the negative effects of densities will decrease. Factors contributing to perceived density are hypothesized to include the perceptual, associational-symbolic and physical aspects of an environment; the temporal aspects of activities and the sociocultural characteristics of actors and settings. The notion of perceived density is based on the fact that any environment offers cues that enable people to judge about an environment's nature, the potential for action that an environment offers and the behavior this is appropriate for that environment. Certain physical and social cues can be read and interpreted as indicating a high-density environment. Other cues can be read as indicating a less dense environment. In both cases, these cues are at least partly independent of the actual number of people per unit area. The degree to which a perceived environment makes demands on our attention and the level of information processing an environment requires are related to the degree of density that is perceived. These factors interact with a person's perceptual abilities because individual thresholds for visual or auditory stimuli may be very different. Physical variables are hypothesized to be related to perceived density by affecting the number of physical sensory stimuli in an environment that indicate the actual or potential presence of people. These physical variables include tight or open spaces; intricate or simple spaces; large or small building height to space ratios; numerous or few signs lights, cars, and people or their traces; the predominance of artificial versus natural elements or smells; high or low noise levels; and the presence or absence of nonresidential or mixed land uses.

Topological relations between fuzzy spatial objects are among the fundamental informations used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Along with positional and attribute information, these relations can be used in many of decision-making processes. There are many problems and complexities in the modeling of topological relations, such as dynamic nature of spatial phenomena, uncertainty in the objects and the nature of relations between the objects themselves.In this paper, we present a new method for modeling of fuzzy topological relations and extracting linguistic terms. This methodology is based on computing similarities between the fuzzy and crisp 9-intersection matrixes. Linguistic variables contain semantic information, i.e., the type of topological relations and quantifiers, which indicate the strength of the relationships. Extraction of these terms directly depends on the fuzzy operators. Therefore a comparison done between the different fuzzy operators to obtain an optimized solution. Finally, with respect to the type of extracted relations, a fuzzy inference system was designed. This system announces alarm value message based on the fuzzy frequency for special application.

Evaluation of the efficiency of regions is necessary, because at present conditions, regions are subjected to lack of resources and facilities. Therefore, these resources should be allocated in such a way that maximum products or services can be supplied with the available resources.This paper attempts to evaluate the performance and efficiency of provinces in terms of being developed nationwide in a comparative style. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is one of the mast efficient techniques, which can be used for measuring the performance.This method is an initiative and powerful technique that has achieved a particular situation in different areas and fields for evolution and estimation of performance.Thus, in this research, the development performance of 30 provinces of the country has been evaluated by this method. The results of using this method had to the introduction of sample provinces and proportion of proposes of stuffs for each province, that is a suitable input for middle and long- term national planning's.

Morphology characteristic of rivers are always changing because of the dynamic nature of the rivers. These changes can effect and destroy agricultural areas and other land uses near the riverbanks. In this research, morphology of parts of Khoramabad River in Lorestan province from Ghaghakhor to Gholaman-e-Sofla (19.5 Km length) was studied. Using the aerial photos of the year 1955, TM Landsat images of the year 1988 and Aster images of the year 2005, three periods of river course were digitized in ArcGIS software. Then with the use of AutoCAD software, some geometrical parameters such as wavelength, valley length, sinuosity coefficient, central degree and radius of circle contact with arc were extracted for some analysis. Also for statistical analysis of the geometrical parameters of the river, we used SPSS software. The result of parameters study, mentioned above, and comparison of parameters in these ranges of time (1955-2005) showed that 17 meanders have been omitted from 1955 to 1988 and two meanders have been added from 1988 to 2005. Geometric parameters of three periods showed the changes on the river shape and pattern. The main reasons of these changes are land use on the riverbank and human impact on the riverbed and riverbank. The main reason of changes in the initial and middle of the study area are extension of Khoram Abad city and construction of buildings at the riverbank. The main reasons of changes at the end of the river, in river morphology are changes in land use and new tectonic movements. Also in all course of the river, human intervention is obvious in the changes of the river morphology.

Global statistics show the fact that the recent decades developing trend of population residence in urban places has been running. Existence of metro stations is as a gravitational field that leads to growth of all kinds of applications in the scope of periphery and station permeation. Due to loss of spatial and land use planning, and required predictions, the growth is scattered and culminate in environmental disturbance and inefficiency of optimal applications to serve in the surroundings of metro stations. This, eventually, it gives rise to fragmentation of the physical setting and space in the environment and even results in numerous social problems. Basic approach in this respect in the framework of "transit oriented development" is presentable. Main body in this respect is a regional path that can consist of a widespread network of heavy and light transit lines and rapid bus or metro that has strong effect on transporting and transferring the population services and, throughout the main path, is the place of transportation usages developed by commercial and residential densities.The purpose of the present research is land use planning with transit oriented development approach in the lands around Sadeqie Metro Station. For this purpose, after investigating on the theories, the approaches and global experiences precede to the consolidation methods of land use planning and urban transportation. Then questionnaire technique was used to gather the information of statistical sample (230 questionnaires). Using GIS software, the information about the manner and quality of land use around the metro station were extracted and analyzed. The results of using, decision making model (MCDM) and investigation of 3 variables and 10 effective criteria in 4 levels showed that the criteria for improving public transportation and sub-criterion for increasing green the space and economical profit were selected as priorities; and accordingly, the functions of land use planning and suggestions for its execution were offered.