Journal of Urban Research and Planning
Year:2013 | Volume:3 | Issue:11|Papers Count:7

With the ever increasing of unplanned urbanization, the quality of citizen`s life are lessening. Understanding the process of urban growths facilitates Sustainable Urban Planning and Urban Management. The spatial patterns of urban modeling can make a useful perspective on how cities develop under different social, economic and environmental factors. So far, many efforts have been carried out in urban growth modeling using a cellular automat, but to create a reliable and credible model, some issues still remain unsolved. The complexity of the urban development process, the numerous variables and the variety of rules have caused the calibration of cellular automation models to be one of the challenging issues in the simulation of urban growth. In this study a new model for urban growth modeling is devised. The model integrates the advantages of cellular automation and genetic algorithm to predict Shiraz urban development between 1990 and 2000. Effective parameters in this process are urban neighborhoods, slope, distance to main roads and undeveloped areas. The chromosome’s contribution of genes to each parameter is then estimated. Optimum results have been exploiting, and finally the overall accuracy and Kappa index were used to evaluate the model. The overall accuracy and the final kappa index obtained were equal to 0.91837 and 0.68406 which indicate that 91.837% of the cells were simulated true and the simulation results were 68.406 % better than the random simulation.

Urban Transportation system is one of the principal and significant elements of urban system that supplies the accessibility needs of citizens to different land uses and makes mobility of the city. Therefore urban transportation and traffic issue and its problems are some of the most important challenges for citizens, urban authorities and municipality in metropolises. Today, one of the solutions against transportation problems is development of public transportation that implements in many cities in all around the world. Rapid public transportation systems from rail to rubber-tired systems are one of the most common solutions. Municipality of Tehran metropolis has chosen the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system to address upon problems and improvement of public transportation. This paper, based on field studies and descriptive-analytic methods, evaluates and investigates the bus rapid transit (BRT) in Tehran metropolis and offering strategies for its development using SWOT technique. To sum up in this paper potentials and constraints of first line of Tehran BRT and ultimately scientific answers and development strategies are examined.

Land use planning has been regarded as an important method in field of urban and regional planning. Land use planning tries to recognize the complex interaction between human society and the environment for creating the logical relationship between human development needs and environmental standards. This article aims to answer two fundamental questions about land use change; include change manner and change position, by use of the LUCIA model that is a consolidated model of economic- social and environmental drivers. According to two-level structure of model, at first level environmental variables have been used as indicator of capacity assessment for changeability values. And at second-level, economic-social variables were reviewed as a key driver for land use changes. This research paper is an applied research and has been done by descriptive- analytical research method. Data were collected and classified by literature review. The Research's analysis framework is based on the conceptual model of land use change -LUCIA model. In this research, model was run based on data of Noshahr County and model’s outputs have been analyzed for urban developments. Finally the results show that the around of residential areas -especially dense areas- and the Infrastructure equipment’s around are more talented for land use change in urban development. According to environmental and social- economic conditions, only fourteen percent (14%) of total areas of the city were detected as suitable conditions for land use change in urban development.

Neighborhoods as the most critical cells in the city body were identified of the link and integrity of the cultural, social, economic, environmental and religious elements that in the most cases neglected attention to acceptation element and community life capacity with limited pay to economic and environmental factors. Objective this article is evaluation community capacity of neighborhoods in small towns and therefore research method is analytical-survey and based to document sources and questionnaire. Data and information including indicators and criteria related to measuring capabilities and community life capacity in Daragh city neighborhoods is such as dynamism and vitality, security, participation, identity and place of belonging, social diversity and increased density with ELECTRE model. Attention to research objective that is assessment and evaluation and selection top neighborhood of city, were studied four neighborhoods of four tissues. The result show ranking the option A1 >A3>A2>A4 that represents superiority of old neighborhood over other neighborhoods and this return to dynamism and vitality index as a result of close neighbors and of course place of belonging, resident's participation in affair relating to neighborhood and social diversity in neighborhoods structure.

Recently, religious tourism has become of great importance between different religions all around the world, so the problems of religious destinations in providing accommodation services for tourists and pilgrims have consequently increased. Mashhad is one of the most large religious destinations the world over. The high population density around the Holy Shrine has made various Physical, social, cultural and environmental adversities; therefore, restructure proceedings are required to prevent from further problems of accommodation services in the coming years. The current study has zoned different areas which have the potential of providing adequate accommodation services on the basis of AHP model and in the framework of some indexes such as accessibility, tiny tread, huge tread, passages, compatibility, and so forth. The achieved results indicate that Mashhad is very appropriate of executing this model and is capable of development especially in the northwest of the city. The necessity of applying this model is recognized to overlap the comprehensive plans of development and civilization of Mashhad Metropolitan, so due to the high population density, the extension of the city is possible besides providing needed regions. In addition Access radius according to High accommodation centers in The Semen area has a high density and capable sites are limitations.

Life is streaming in urban spaces intertwined with natural elements and Man has a sense of place there. These expressions can be derived from the natural qualities outlined. According to ancient Persian culture and their adaptation with nature, the necessities of such places are to be felt in cities and metropolises. A public space can be used as a place for social interaction, group activities, entertainment, recreation and sporting. In this study “Bagh-Boland linear park” is selected as a green way in the built environment and the activities which could affect the residents’ social life have been studied. For the better understanding of social life concept in urban public space, the main criteria have been identified in a descriptive analytical study through the scientific sources. The Data were collected by field surveys, personal interviews and questionnaires. In this way the desirability of the urban space and its liveliness ability were evaluated through Investigation of the Green Way, measurement of people interaction, Variety of activities, cultural diversity and age of users. The results indicate that the linear park has various functions, and this functions change at different hours in a day; different days in a weeks and different seasons due to the flexibility of places, therefore people of different age, gender and ethnic groups are able to use these places with various goals. Finally, emphasizing the social life, the strengths and weaknesses of the green way were identified and some suggestions have been presented to improve it.

Earthquake is one of natural disasters which most cities all over the world are confronted with. Generally, this problem is intensified with the widest human unconsidered interference in natural environment such as construction in the realm of fault, and disregarding the construction standard. The necessity of decreasing the vulnerability of cities against the earthquake is one of the main purposes of physical planning, urban planning and urban planning and urban design. Therefore, the first step is to identify the degree of elements and urban components vulnerability and assessing it based on the current models so as to identify the urban vulnerable areas and structures for decreasing the effects of earthquake. Regarding the issue of vulnerability of urban buildings against, the type of this study is descriptive-analytic using inversion hierarchical weight process, the study yields appropriate estimate concerning the vulnerability of urban buildings by means of spatial and descriptive data of main components old building (The quality of building, The antiquity of buildings, Type of materials, Land use regarding the risk-taking, Density population, density building). It then the study presents the effect of each of the indicators and classifications on the degree of vulnerability. Next, the data are synthesized using geographical information system and finally the vulnerable districts are identified. The result reveals that 76.06 percent of Masjed Soleiman building is vulnerable. According to the obtained data Sabz Abad district is the most vulnerable district and Talkhab district - despite is broad space- is the least vulnerable district.