Physical expansion of cities, particularly those that have experienced unusual growth due to economic, social, and political transformations, has led to numerous problems. To this end, the purpose of this study was to investigate conditions of Birjand City regarding flooding and hazard zoning caused by this important natural event. The present study is applied regarding the objective and descriptive-analytic considering its methodology. The study was descriptive-analytic and performed through prediction of the scope of damages caused by floods and based on hazard zoning. Data gathered regarding land use, population density, features of existing watercourses, slope, residential and population density, CN coefficient, runoff, the age of buildings, open spaces, and other influencing components. Collected data were weighed after correction and conversion, and required maps were prepared after conducting paired comparisons and determination of eventual coefficients for each layer. AHP model and associated software, particularly Expert Choice, and ArcGIS, were used to determine final weights and coefficients.  According to the results, given that development of Birjand City has been done on the sub-basin of the existing watercourse, all the city is exposed to the risk of flooding. However, southern and southeastern zones with almost 20% of the city area are subject to high and very high risk; northwestern and southeastern with 50% of the area are subject to average risk; and other zones of the city with less than 30% of area are subject to low and very low risk. As a result, the operation of flood control and flood warning systems in areas with greater vulnerability should be considered, while illegal occupation of flooding basins and watercourses should be dealt with.

Urban societies are complex landscapes that face unbalanced and exogenous growth and are rapidly changing as a result of population growth and urbanization. That is to say, non-urban, large swaths of land are consumed by cities and urban settlements, and over time they are fragmented into smaller pieces. Therefore, the present study was designed to detect and evaluate changes in the landscape structure of Tabriz metropolitan area and to evaluate the performance of landscape metrics in analyzing changes. To this end, first the land use maps for 1984, 2000 and 2018 were prepared using Landsat satellite imagery. Then, in order to analyze the changes, a combination of Landscape metrics including NP, CA, PLAND, LPI, ED, MPS, LSI, and COHESION was computed at two levels of land class and landscape using Fragstats4.2 software. The results showed that the lands used for urban settlement during this period have had the most changes and growth, in contrast to agricultural farms, gardens and green-space which have had a downward trend and have been converted to other uses. Also, the number and density of patches have increased over time, leading to the fragmentation of the landscape. On the other hand, the average size of patches belonging to constructed lands and agricultural and horticultural lands respectively increased and decreased, and caused more distortion and complexity of Tabriz city landscape through an increase in the landscape shape index. In general, the analysis of land use maps and landscape metrics clearly reveals the effects of human activities and urbanization on the surrounding environment, and the results indicate that the landscape of Tabriz has got more granular, more complex and geometrically more irregular. Then, with this decreasing connectivity, it has become more fragmented.

Due to the consequences of globalization, regional development, which has always been highly important in macro planning, requires new approaches that are flexible about regional change. Among these consequences is the emergence of powerful regional economies with high GDP that have drawn the attention of many planners to the concept of competitiveness. Using recently proposed approaches and the important aspects of the global economy, this study set out to explore this concept at the area level. The purpose of this study was to analyze movements and structural-functional relationships in order to develop a local pattern of clusters in Tehran province. This study was a developmental-applied research project in terms of purpose and an analytic-descriptive one in terms of methodology. The data collection was based on document analysis and library studies and the data was collected through note taking, available statistics, and documenting. Data analysis was carried out using cluster analysis and specialized index methods, and the results were used in identifying activity clusters after examining the natural capability of each county. The results of the analysis show that the pattern of activity in Tehran province is the metropolis-dominated cluster pattern, and the counties which are located in the province can be identified in the form of 5 regional-local clusters. The above mentioned clusters of activities can provide the basis for regional development in Tehran province by joint and purposeful planning based on the priorities offered in this article.

Balancing the Spatial structure and determining the future urban network are the fundamental missions of spatial planning. As the main organizing elements of space, cities are organized within the urban network form. Urban network is assessed based on the agreement between form and function dimensions. The effectiveness of various models can be investigated through an analysis of their relationships. Accordingly, the study at hand has been carried out to analyze the urban morphology in order to accord the morphological and functional dimensions of Hormozgan province urban network. The study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. The analytic indices of the study for Hormozgan province urban network morphology include road network, the distance between settlements, urban population, and types of services. The analytic instrument for the attainment of the purpose of the study is the Inward Distance Weighted (IDW) model within ARC GIS 10-4 software. The obtained results show that Hormozgan province urban network morphology follows four patterns, namely mono-centric, polycentric, linear and isolated. The location of these patterns in the province indicates the relationship between the location and the network morphology. As the large cities of the province are located near the sea, the mono-centric and polycentric patterns have been formed under the influence of the sea factor. However, the isolated and linear patterns are located in both the islands of the province and the mountainous areas or intermountain plateaus. Ultimately, the study shows that the lack of agreement between the form and the function weakens the connection and interaction of the interconnected areas. This lack of agreement reduces the fulfillment of the urban network’s use of neighboring opportunities and decreases the network effectiveness.