As the distinguishing boundaries between upper and lower levels, regional plans and programs have an effective role in bringing about coordination between planning levels and improving their effectiveness and functioning. Due to the importance of planning and the results obtained from regional programs, the study at hand set out to examine plans at national, regional, and provincial levels based on regional approach with an emphasis on Gilan province plans. In this study, qualitative research method was used, and to classify the existing knowledge, the required data was divided into research analysis units, namely the plans and programs at the three foregoing levels. These were then analyzed using content analysis and document analysis methods in NVIVO 12 software. After data analysis, 96 open codes were achieved. The homogeneity of the open codes of each of the three levels led us to extract the main axial code titled “region-oriented approach in plans and programs at national, regional, and provincial levels” along with three other secondary axial codes, namely “holism and movement toward abstract and stereotypical concepts and issues,” “regional plans following macro plans,” and “lack of a regional decision making mechanism at the province level.” It is noteworthy that the highest regional approach presence was found at province level with 49 open codes.

The growing role of science and technology in economic development makes the necessity of policymaking and planning for the science and technology system more important. In line with centralized, top-down planning approaches to science and technology policymaking, the spatial planning approach is a bottom-up effort to identify regional capacities and potentials in order to provide an endogenous and balanced model for the development of science and technology. Although the spatial planning approach in its general form has a multi-decade history in the planning literature, the optimization of this approach in the science and technology governance needs methodological innovations. The purpose of this study was to provide a science and technology spatial planning methodology using institutional mapping. To this end, we used two cross-sections. On the one hand, we took into account innovation within a regional system, and on the other hand, we adopted the institutional mapping to attain a method for its analysis and estimation. In this system, first the institutions of the science and technology institution including the science institution, the technology institution, and the market institution were identified, and then the interconnection capabilities of these three institutions and their subsidiaries were evaluated. This was done through the extraction of the similarity graph. The similarity graph, which was obtained through the quantification of binary relationships of the science and technology system sub-institutions, expressed the diversity and intensity of the connections of each institute with other institutes. The more diverse and intense the relationships among the institutions were in general, the more optimal the science and technology system would be. Ultimately, observing this graph, the policymaker can design a scenario for moving toward regional balance for each of these institutions so that in the predetermined chronological horizons, the institutional proximity is increased and the agreement and accord of the institutions are enhanced.

It has been years since innovation was first introduced as a driver of economic development. In addition, after a decade of attention to the regional innovation system policies in the Yazd province, this approach has not shown any positive effect on the development of the province. Thus, this study set out to provide a suitable model for the regional innovation system development in Iran following the investigation of the Yazd province as a case study. To this end, this study used the exploratory factor analysis and relative importance index to identify and analyze the key factors effective on the development of regional innovation system. The findings obtained from the opinions of experts and actors of this field showed that the three factors of human resources; the Science and Technology Park; and growth, innovation, and creativity centers in Yazd Province have the highest importance among all studied factors. This reveals the concentration of finances, policies, and projects on these factors and ignorance of other factors. In the light of the importance and the designated priorities, the factors of innovation system in Yazd province were classified into five groups. These included human and social resources, innovation infrastructure, innovation processes, business dynamics, and endogenous development. It can be concluded that so far, the concentration has been on the elementary stage of regional innovation system model – which essentially functions as the input for the system – and the innovation system in Yazd province is in its early stages. Accordingly to the obtained model of the study, the regional innovation system development in Yazd province needs concentration on the three groups of factors, i.e., innovation processes, business dynamism, and endogenous development.

The development of urbanization in accordance with environment is an important issue for sustainability. A correct understanding of the relationship between urbanization and environment is highly vital for the coordinated development of both systems. In recent decades, the expansion of urbanization and manmade infrastructure without taking into account the environmental resources has been increasing. This has led to numerous consequences such as the reduction of environmental resources and the escalation of environmental pollution, and has severely endangered the future of sustainable development in Khorasan Razavi province. In the study at hand, the balance among urbanization and environment subsystems was examined using the coupling coordination degree model in the cities of Khorasan Razavi province. The ranking of cities was done based on the coupling coordination degree scores. Based on the scores of cities in each subsystem, the cities were divided into four areas, namely areas under urbanization pressure, areas under environment pressure, areas under dual pressure, and areas under no pressure, and the relationships between the coupling coordination degree and the areas were compared. The results showed that Gonobad (.66) and Dargaz (.62) cities have achieved the highest balance score and have been classified in the primary balance group. On the other hand, Khoshab (.36), Mahwelat (.38), and Davarzan (.39) cities had the lowest rate of balance and were classified in the average imbalance group. While the majority of the cities located in the areas under double pressure and environment pressure were classified in the low imbalance group, most of the cities located in the areas under no pressure and urbanization pressure were grouped in the near-to-balance category. Overall, based on the calculations made in this study, the coupling coordination degree has been increasing from dual pressure area to area under environmental pressure, then to the area under urbanization pressure, and finally to the area under no pressure.

After the implementation of the contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces as the driver of economic growth and the long-term development of cities and regions, this idea has come under criticisms, especially due to its compliance with capitalist structures. In practice, the problem is that the attractiveness of life, work, and recreation in these spaces is purely accompanied by the consideration of the needs of creative layers of society with a mercantilist view and through sacrificing many primarily qualitative and secondarily contextual indices. Therefore, although these recently found arenas have received positive global attention, they face some challenges. One of these challenges is the low quality of places in the neighborhoods entailing contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces. Therefore, the purpose of this study was the attainment of qualitative factors of the placemaking mechanisms and urban policymaking of contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces as well as the development of the existing conceptual framework to respond to the criticisms in this regard. The research method was the qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the related documentary data and provision of an answer to the nature of the palcemaking factors using unlimited classical meta-analysis of Persian and English resources, including the scientific-research articles, theses and dissertations, books, and reports, and then coding and counting the frequency of the analysis units. At the end, the meta-analysis of the resources led to the identification of 21 conceptual labels for contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces in the form of four dimensions of characteristic, form, performance, and image. Consequently, it seems that consideration of the requirements of placemaking the related spaces – including accessibility, participation, investment, acceptance, social liveliness, dynamism in activities, and integration – can help increase the quality of knowledge and innovation spaces in the contemporary era.

The purpose of this study was examining the course of development of Qazvin urban area in order to optimize the decisions of related authorities to enhance sustainable spatial efficiency and exploitation. Through a meta-analysis, four urban area perspectives were extracted, including natural-cultural, administrative-political, functional, and communicative. This was then followed by a theoretical conclusion. GIS spatial statistics were used for the analysis purposes. The results indicated the presence of only the physical and political perspective. The administrative-political perspective of urban area (as the only formal area) and functional urban area (only in an informal manner) were identified as the urban perspectives of Qazvin. The investigation of the natural-cultural perspective of Qazvin urban area led to the identification of southern Alborz area, which based on water resources approximately conforms to the political borders of Qazvin province. Due to its use as a crossroads, this area does not have cultural coherence, and its closeness to the political capital of Iran has made its environmental conditions critical and has changed the role of this area. To solve these problems, it is suggested that first an ecological planning is done as the basis of spatial planning and development decisions. Moreover, due to the cultural inconsistency of Qazvin area, it is suggested to adopt creation of identity through regional governance. Moreover, the economic areas resulting from functionally connected areas should be enhanced and directed in the light of the ecological conditions of the area. Although the application of neo-regionalism viewpoint at transnational level is not possible due to the specific political conditions of Iran, its application in regional and local levels seems to be unavoidable in order to reduce ecologic crisis (water resources) and enhance identity creation in Qazvin urban area.

The sustainable physical-spatial development of Mashhad urban complex is the prerequisite of attaining sustainable regional (provincial) and national development. This necessitates paying attention to the development of scenarios that set the ground for the development of Mashhad.  In the study at hand, it was tried through the participation of the provincial managers and academic experts to identify first the key drivers of physical-spatial changes in the rural settlements of Mashhad urban complex and then the scenarios effective on the physical-spatial development of these settlements. This study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of research method. The data was collected through library research, document analysis, and survey (interview) methods. Examining scientific resources, 69 factors effective on the physical-spatial changes were identified, which were grouped into five dimensions. Then, 29 participants in two groups, namely the managers of the related organizations and academic experts, were interviewed. Data analysis was done based on future research techniques, including Schwartz model, structural analysis, and interaction analysis, using Micmac and Scenario Wizard software packages. The results showed that 512 scenarios have weak compatibility, and only one scenario has strong, sustainable compatibility (zero incompatibility) (2.8 percent of possible scenarios are credible). The first scenario, which is in positive direction, has the overall interaction effect score of 771 and compatibility value of 7, while the second scenario that expresses the fairly favorable conditions for the future of rural settlements has the overall interaction effect score of 736 and compatibility value of -2. The third scenario, which has the compatibility value of -3 and the overall interaction effect score of 695, can be one of the possible scenarios for the future physical-spatial changes in rural areas, too.

As city framework, the city spatial organization is a broader and more comprehensive concept than city spatial structure. In fact, the spatial structure tends only to the physical structure of the city, while spatial organization takes also into account the examination and identification of various functions, including economic, social, transportation functions. In addition, high-rise buildings – as phenomena that have flourished in the past decade in Hamedan and are still growing – have always got influenced by various factors and have affected various urban aspects such as spatial-physical, economic, social, environmental, and traffic dimensions. In fact, in addition to the effects of this issue on the physical structure of the city, they have brought about many changes in the spatial and functional organization of the city such that changes in the daily commuting to shopping centers, offices, etc. in the city are clearly observable. On the other hand, the previous studies have rarely addressed the effect of high-rise buildings on the spatial and functional organization of the city in major areas of business. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze and evaluate the effects of high-rise buildings in the form of major modern central business districts on the spatial-functional organization of Hamedan city. This study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. Moreover, in order to collect the required data, the documents related to urban development plans, field observations, interviews, and questionnaires were used. Then, to analyze the obtained data, the spatial-locative analysis models in GIS environment were adopted. The conceptual model of this study provided 8 indices for the analysis of the effects of modern high-rise CBDs on city spatial-functional organization, and each of them was analyzed spatially. The results of the analyses indicated that in the single-core spatial organization of Hamedan city, there is a high concentration on the central part of the city, but this concentrated area is expanding and new urban cores are emerging due to various factors. One of the reasons for the appearance of these new cores is business-office high-rise buildings. Another noteworthy finding of this study is that the majority of these newly emerging urban cores are growing along Buali-Jahannama road. Therefore, due to the changes in the spatial-functional structure of the city, paying more attention to urban infrastructures and flexible planning should be among the main priorities of the city management.

City Development Strategy (CDS), which aims at reducing poverty, bringing about sustainable development, enhancing participation, and creating good urban governance, has attracted the attention of many Iranian scientific circles. This approach can replace the previous inflexible plans for the removal of the future crises in all cities of Iran. It is clear that in case the novel city development strategies are not used and the old methods and policies are exercised, the problems of Iran cannot be solved. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of Malard city using Meta SWOT model and to propose effective strategies to achieve sustainable development of this city. This study was descriptive-analytical in terms of research method, applied in terms of purpose, and mixed-methods in terms of approach. The statistical population was comprised of 50 managers of Malard city. Based on the obtained results, the reduction of water resources, excessive migration (especially the increase in the share of Afghans in city population composition), and social harms are the main obstacles to the sustainable development of Malard city that need to be taken into account in the strategic development planning process of this city. Moreover, among the factors effective on the sustainable development of Malard city, the suitable grounds for agricultural activities and   conversion and complementary industries as well as ethnic and cultural diversity have strategic fitness.

The disasters of recent years indicate that communities and individuals are getting increasingly vulnerable and risks are progressively growing. Nonetheless, the need to reduce risks and vulnerabilities are often ignored up until the occurrence of disasters. In the study at hand, which was done based on the descriptive-analytical method, it was tried to examine and predict the vulnerability perspective of the areas located within District six of Ahvaz metropolis during a potential earthquake based on the main purpose of this study. The theoretical data of the study was collected through library research method. After the extraction of the related indices, the spatial analysis of each index was carried out through fuzzy Delphi method, IHWP vulnerability model, and GIS software analyses. The analysis of the findings illustrated that considering the first and second priorities of the crises management, 15.03 percent of all areas of the district under study are highly vulnerable to earthquake. That is to say, in case of a strong earthquake in the district, they will be vulnerable. The study concluded that the physical qualities of the building are as important as the factors such as land use, population density, and time of earthquake occurrence. These have all effective roles in the vulnerability rate and the rescue activities.