Iran needs population growth in order to achieve high weight in the region and world as well as to obviate peripheral threats. Iran's area is so vast that it can accommodate more population than the current population. The country having population density of 46 individuals per square kilometer ranks 162 in the world. However, quality and efficacy are necessary for a population to lead high weight. Therefore, it has been attempted in this research to explain necessity of population growth of the country geographically; and to study optimization of indices for these changes and policy making in order to lead the changes in the framework of the land preparation plans. The research questions are: Which indices are considered as priority from the view point of the land preparation, concerning the population growth; and which areas and provinces are more apt to accommodate more population? General purpose of this study is to consider crucial land preparation indices in population growth policy and to prioritize provinces based on the indices. The research method is descriptive-analytical.

Today, the expansion of urbanism has led to many problems for various countries in the world, especially developing countries. Iran is one of the developing countries that in recent years has faced numerous damages due to population increase, especially in urban areas. In recent years, countries in the world have tried to overcome the problems deriving from unsustainable urbanism via using sustainable urban development. Accordingly, the authors carried out this study to determine the similarities and differences among sustainability evaluation systems existing in developing and developed counties and explain the needs of developing countries, like Iran, to improve management of urban areas. Therefore, in the study at hand, the global urban sustainability indicators such as BREEAM Community، CASBEE-UD، GBI Township، LEED-ND، IGBC Green Townships، GRIHA-LD، Green Star, and IUSAF were examined and were compared with the intended system in Iran (IUSI). In this process, the similarities and differences of selected evaluation systems were compared with each other in terms of type and importance level of indicators. The obtained result showed that the urbanism challenges in various countries in the world are different based on the development level and environmental, social, economic, and geopolitical conditions. In addition, the most important indicators of urban development measurement in developed countries were identified as energy, resources and social welfare, smartening, and environment, while the prioritized indicators in the developing countries were determined to be planning and developing the society, managing infrastructure resources, transportation, local security and economy, employment, and – mostly importantly – access to healthy water. Moreover, the findings of this study indicate that via localization of the systems and indicators related to sustainability evaluation for every country, region, or province, a more precise evaluation can be attained. This can offer great assistance to future planning to advance the sustainable development goals.

Strategic spatial planning is presented as an approach to deal with the chronic challenges facing the sustainable use of space, i.e. the physical-spatial division and the policy-planning division. However, there are major barriers to realizing this approach in Iran, which are affected by its governance and planning system approaches. In this regard, the current research has attempted to identify and explain the major barriers to the realization of strategic spatial planning in Iran with an exploratory approach and a combined interview and targeted Delphi method. The data was collected through a semi-structured interview in the form of a targeted Delphi method in two rounds of 25 experts, and the barriers and related concepts were confirmed, extracted and described using MAXQDA software and Kendall's coefficient of agreement. The results of 405 extracted codes indicated that there are 4 major barriers to the realization of strategic spatial planning in Iran, which are: geographical-spatial barrier (6 explanatory concepts and 26% of the extracted codes), rentier political economy barrier (7 explanatory concepts and 34% of extracted codes), institutional division barrier (7 explanatory concepts and 23% of extracted codes) and structural-spatial division barrier (7 explanatory concepts and 17% of extracted codes). The present study highlights the importance of recognizing and correctly confronting and taking constructive measures against the four mentioned barriers, which are the main sources of physical-spatial and political-planning divisions in the way of realizing strategic spatial planning in Iran.

Understanding how to distribute economic, social, cultural and other opportunities as first step in spatial development planning can improve service delivery and increase equilibrium between regions. This research aimed at study and analysis of 31 provinces of Iran based on social indicatros enjoyment. Therefore, the present study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of nature and method of research. Required data collected through the statistical yearbook of 1395 (2016) in the form of 52 important social indicators including social, cultural, welfare, educational and health components. Shannon entropy, coefficient of variation (C.V), WASPAS used to Wheightining of criterias, analysis of indicators dispersion and determining the level of development of provinces respectively in the context of MATLAB. The result shows that there is a lack of social development balance between Iran provinces. Tehran, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi and Fars are four provinces that placed at higher level of social development and Alborz, Zanjan, Chaharmahal Bakhtiari, Semnan, South Khorasan, North Khorasan, Ilam and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad are placed at the most deprived areas of the country in terms of social indicators. Overall, the results show that social development status in Iran's provinces is not synonymous with social and spatial justice and requires proper and effective attention and management.

One of the pillars of spatial planning is determining the role and function of regions based on their competitive advantages. By developing innovative infrastructure that supports production, regional competitiveness improves regional efficiency and forms a network of complementary and reciprocal relations between regions, which ultimately leads to the capital attraction, value creation, and integrated regional development. In this regard, the present study aims at identifying the creative regions of Iran and determining the competitive advantages of those regions. This study is explanatory applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. Derived from the document analysis of secondary sources, quantitative data was used to analyze both creativity and competitiveness. The data used to identify creative regions included the number of scientific and research centers and companies, consulting engineers, the industries with high and medium technology, employees in the manufacturing sectors, and the university students of the provinces of Iran. Moreover, the number of employees in major activity groups was used to determine competitiveness. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were performed to identify creative regions, while correspondence analysis was performed to determine competitive advantages in SPSS software. The results show that the provinces of Tehran, East Azerbaijan, Isfahan, Khuzestan, Fars, Kerman, and Mazandaran have the knowledge infrastructure capacity required for creative regions. Isfahan’s share of construction is 11.1 percent, while Tehran’s share of information is 41.2 percent. The interpretation of angles smaller than 0.2 between correspondence analysis vectors reveals that Tehran and Isfahan provinces have competitive advantage in information and communication and manufacturing, respectively. It was also found that most regions of the Iran do not have a specialized role and the competitive advantages of the provinces are not supported by the knowledge infrastructure of the regions.

Residential and employment attractions urge the population to reside in regions with appropriate potentials for development. The metropolitan regions of Iran have been attractive centers for the population; this attractiveness resulted in some changes in different spatial patterns. The present research examines the effect of spatial-physical, and demographic variables on metropolitan regions of Iran in order to achieve suitable planning for future spatial development of Iran. The objective of the study is to analyze correlation, centralization, and uniformity of distribution and composition of spatial patterns of development in the metropolitan regions. To do this, Shannon entropy, spatial Gini coefficient, spatial density index, and Kriging Estimator were employed. The results showed a trend that dictates on a decrease in concentration in metropolitan regions, which has manifested in different spatial patterns. In Tehran metropolitan region, the trend of development goes into polycentric with sprawl in the peri-urban and rural area. According to the development trend of population centers in Tehran, it can be said that at the same time of concentrated centralization, other settlements have played an effective role in the spatial structure of this metropolitan area, and strong road network has led to the formation of such pattern.  In Isfahan metropolitan region, the spatial structure has changed into concentration. This has happened with an unbalanced distribution to a radial pattern. While Mashhad metropolitan region has a monocentric linear pattern, Shiraz shows a monocentric and sprawl in the periphery. This can be attributed to the small growth of settlements compared to the metropolis.