Up until now, Islamic Republic of Iran – rising from among people and adopting a religious and divine discourse – has provided a unique model of the administration of people’s affairs in various dimensions through the creation and enhancement of institutions and structures appropriate to its political system. Accordingly, the consideration of ideals in the form of structures, institutions, and approaches is an issue that has a unique role in strengthening the internal structure of this political system. In this article, using the descriptive-analytical method and collecting data through document analysis, library research, and survey methods, city council – as an institution rising from the public vote and a phenomenon similar to local parliament – are defined as the dependent variable. Moreover, in line with the identification of the dimensions and history of these councils, the position of council in Islamic thought is discussed. According to the obtained results, it can be maintained that councils’ importance has four important and effective aspects, namely participation in, distribution of, penetration in, and formation of the identity of power and internal structure strength. To this end, they play roles in four directions, namely strengthening the internal structure cohesion through providing identity to individuals’ roles, enhancing the influence of the Islamic political system in various layers of people and society, fulfilling the maximum participation of people and the role of people in governance, and the just distribution of resources based on reality and the local and national desires. It was found that councils have had greater effectiveness in the fulfillment of maximum participation and involvement of people in governance compared to other directions.

The detection of urban landscape changes in urban areas is of utmost importance for the maintenance of the safety of environment and the promotion of sustainable development. To this end, the consideration of the spatial metrics capabilities to describe the landscape structure can be a valuable move to identify the growth models in metropolises. The purpose of this study was to provide the urban-rural gradient analysis of the landscape metrics in Tehran metropolis in the year 2018 as well as the analysis of their change trend in order to investigate the spatial-chronological changes in the landscape. In order to analyze the metrics, the moving window method was used at landscape and class levels. To this end, Landsat 8 satellite images were used, and the landcover was divided into human-made, open, vegetation, and water lands in a supervised manner. As with the gradient analysis, transects with 4km*4km dimensions at four directions – namely center-northeast, center-southeast, center-northwest, and center-southwest were directed from District 12 of Tehran Municipality in GIS 10.2 software. The results showed that at the landscape level, the closer we go to the business center of Tehran Metropolis, the number and density of patches increase, while the closer we go to rural areas the average index of landscape shape has relatively uniform changes. At the class level, the more distant we get from the business center of Tehran metropolis, the percentage of human-made patches and open lands increases and that of the vegetation patches decreases. Then, it might be concluded that urban development has brought about an increase in the density of patches in landscape, such that in the central transect, the continuity of landscape is reduced, and the fragmentation of the structural elements of landscape is increased. The land use changes have led to the expansion of the city toward the country and have negatively affected the vegetation and water resources.

In the current era, justice and advancement are deemed as the two wings of sustainable development, with each being worthless without the other. As one of the main service systems in cities, public transportation has an important role in the realization of justice. As a result, the purpose of this article was to analyze and rank the 15 districts of Isfahan metropolis based on justice in accessing public transportation. In order to attain this goal, the required data was collected using document analysis and field study (through observation and questionnaire). The Best-Worst (BWM) and COCOSO methods were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that Districts 1 and 3 had the most and Districts 9, 11, and 14 the least public transportation facilities. Moreover, the need to public transportation – in terms of the number of users – was highest in Districts 8 and 10 and lowest in Districts 2, 9, and 11. The combination of these two factors also showed that Districts 1, 2, 3, and 15 had bigger facility to user ratios, while Districts 8, 10, 11, and 14 had smaller facility to user ratios. In the other districts, the facility to user ratio was mainly moderate. Therefore, it is necessary to pay more attention to this gap between facilities and users’ needs when planning for public transportation in future.

The prediction of climactic changes is of great importance due to their destructive effects on aquatic, environmental, economic, and social resources. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to predict the climactic changes of Kermanshah city using micro-scale general atmospheric circulation models accessible in LARS-WG6 (GFDL-CM3, MPI-ESM-MR, MIROC5) model in scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for the 2020 to 2100 period based on the benchmark period of 1980-2010. In order to evaluate the data forecasted in LARS-WG model, the error rate of the observed and predicted data was addressed using R2, RMSE, MSE, and MAD criteria. The results showed that LARS-WG model had the needed capability to predict climactic data in future. In the secondary models, the MPI-ESM-MR model in scenario RCP4.5 showed a higher reliability rate compared to other secondary models evaluated in the study. Moreover, all models indicated increases in the average minimum and maximum temperature and forecasted changes in rainfall pattern in future periods in the studied area. Then, the SPI and De Martonne indices were calculated for all models. According to SPI index, all evaluated climactic models demonstrated that by the year 2100, the years with normal index would decrease while the years with dry conditions would increase. Moreover, based on De Martonne index, the GFDL model in RCP8.5 scenario estimated the climactic changes level more than other models, and predicted that dry and semi-dry years will be more than wet years. Contrarily, the MIRO model in RCP45 scenario acted more optimistically and predicted less climactic changes.