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.

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.

One of the policies that has been taken into account by many countries to develop sustainable tourism is the development of touristic towns and villages in a centralized manner and the prevention of haphazard, unplanned contractions that destroy environment, sociocultural context, and economic structure of the touristic attraction sites. This policy was enacted by the Iranian cabinet in 2017. The purpose of this study was to present a methodology to identify the spaces suitable for the development of touristic towns and villages. The study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of methodology. As the input of the analytic model, the spatial territory of Mazandaran province was divided into 23007 spatial units, each covering 100 hectares. Then, the development of touristic towns and villages were evaluated and prioritized. In this article, the combined index of “the priority of the development of touristic towns and villages in Mazandaran province” was made by combining exploratory factor analysis and network analysis (F’ANP) based on 14 factors effective on the development of touristic towns and villages. The resulting map was then trimmed based on four control indices. The findings of the model showed that the three factors of “environmental potential and transportation infrastructure,” “the quantity and quality of serving the tourists,” and “tourism investment potential” are effective on the prioritization of Mazandaran province spaces in order to develop touristic towns and villages. The results of study demonstrated that the development of touristic towns and villages in this province is possible in the middle and eastern side of seashore, in limited areas in the eastern plains, and in the eastern and western mountainous lands.

The progress of smartening cities on the one hand and the requirements of urban sustainability on the other hand have paved the way for transition to the sustainable smart city. The study at hand was carried out to present an optimal model of smart city from the viewpoint of sustainable urban development. This study was an applied research project in terms of purpose and a cross-sectional survey in terms of research method and data collection timespan. The statistical population included urban management managers and experts. The optimal sample size was determined to be 384 using Morgan’s table and the participants were selected via simple random sampling method. The data was collected through a questionnaire that had been validated through construct, convergent, and divergent validity measures. Using Cronbach’s alpha and combined reliability measures, the dependability of the questionnaire was confirmed. To validate the smart city model from the viewpoint of sustainable urban development, the partial least squares regression and Smart PLS software were used. According to the obtained results, the smart urban infrastructure and smart governance are the two cornerstones of the model that have the strongest effects on the creation of a smart city based on sustainable development. The effectiveness rate is decreased in the subsequent levels and the variables at the same level show mutual interaction. By affecting the smartening of transportation and influencing the technology-based smart businesses, these factors lay support to smart economy and environment. Then, through smart structures and smart people, the sustainable urban development can be attained, which in turn leads to smartening the city.

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.

Air pollution is one of the most important problems of industrial cities. The existence of large industrial factories, official and industrial facilities, National Iranian South Oil Company, National Iranian Drilling Company, etc., have turned Ahvaz to one of the main industrial centers and one of the most polluted cities of Iran. Coming into contact with airborne microorganisms is related to a host of negative effects on the human health. This study was carried out to find out the effect of oil industries on air pollution and its optimal locating through the environmental approach in Ahvaz metropolis. In this study, SCREEN3 software was used to find out and analyze the distribution of Sox, NOx, and CO pollutants. Based on expert opinion, the main criteria were determined as climatic, natural, environmental, and economic factors. After calculating weights through the AHP model and attaining the information layers, the GIS software capabilities to combine and overlap the maps were used. This led to a map depicting the optimal location of oil industries congruent with the environmental approach in Ahvaz metropolis. According to the obtained results, there should be no residence-based activity in at least 5000 meters distance from the oil industries, where air pollutants have a considerable density. That is to say, within this distance, the animate and inanimate creatures will be damaged the most. The most optimal areas for the establishment of oil industry facilities are located on the west, south, southwest, and parts of east and north of the area under study.

The main purpose of this study was modeling the suitability of recreational services in order to identify the high-priority areas for the development of recreational activities. To identify the spatial patterns of recreational services, the landscape attractiveness index, visit rate estimation, and access distribution were combined using a set of sub-indices. Moreover, the weight of each index was calculated using CRITIC weighting method and the importance of each index in the formation of recreational services spatial suitability was determined. The results showed that the presentation of highly recreational services is mainly done in the areas with forest ecosystems, protected areas, and aquatic ecosystems such as rivers and wetlands that have diverse landscapes. On the contrary, urban and human-built areas have the least potential for the provision of recreational services. Getis-Ord Gi* statistic was used to model the recreational suitability, identify recreational suitability clusters, and zoning. With its very low suitability, Zone 1 covers 19.9 percent of the area under study. This zone is mainly filled with agricultural lands (54.7%), grasslands (36.1%), and urban lands (6.8%). In contrast, with its very high recreational suitability, Zone 5 covers 16.5 percent of the area under study. The main uses of the lands in this zone are forest lands (55.5%) and aquatic layers including rivers and wetlands (17.2%).  Zone 3, which has an average suitability rate, covers more than half of the area under study. The approach presented in this study helps identify the development priorities in the light of the recreational potentials of the ecosystems existing in an area. Thus, it can be used to improve the spatial planning of recreation and tourism in order to preserve ecosystem services and sustainable use of them.

Hospitals are among the most important service centers, and the selection of the optimal site for them is a very important (yet complex) undertaking, as it can bring about optimal spatial distribution of hospitals and can make them optimally accessible for citizens. In the present study, in order to optimally locate hospitals in District 5 of Tehran metropolis, a combination of the geographical information system, objective weighting methods, and multi-criteria decision making method was used. The geographical information system was used to analyze and manage the optimal hospital locating criteria, the CRITIC weighting method was implemented to account for the correlation between the criteria, and Shannon's entropy method was used to model the existing uncertainty in the criteria. CODAS multi-criteria decision making method was used due to its novelty and the evaluation of alternatives based on two criteria. Based on the results obtained from CRITIC weighting method, distance from health centers, and based on the results of Shannon's entropy method, distance from industrial areas were the most important optimal hospital locating criteria. The results of ranking the candidate sites using CRITIC-CODAS and Shannon’s entropy-CODAS were almost the same, and both methods identified the sites on the western side of the District (that did not have any hospital) as the appropriate sites. The results of the study indicated the high accuracy of combined objective weighting and multi-criteria decision making methods in optimal locating of the hospitals. It might be asserted that these methods can replace thematic weighting methods such as analytical hierarchy process.

Sustainable development has gradually and over time brought about various approaches with different goals. Ecological city is one of these approaches that has a stronger emphasis on environment issue as well as the relationships between city development and nature. The purpose of this study was to determine the local factors effective on the achievement of ecological city in order to sustainably develop Darcheh city. This study was mixed-methods (qualitative-quantitative) in terms of paradigm, and descriptive-analytical and exploratory in terms of nature. Data was collected using document analysis and field study through two means: interviews with experts using the Delphi method and a questionnaire. In the qualitative phase (the Delphi method), 30 experts and specialists were interviewed. In the quantitative phase, the statistical population of the study was comprised of Darcheh citizens aging over 15, who were 37367 individuals in the year 2016. From among these, 375 participants were selected using cluster sampling. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the urban planning experts, and its reliability was corroborated through Chronbach’s alpha coefficient. The results of the study in both phases (qualitative and quantitative) showed that the environmental and economic dimensions – with the average scores of 4.23 and 4.11 and (beta) regression coefficients of .345 and .349 – best describe the achievement of ecological city, there is a relative homogeneity among various neighborhoods of the city in terms of ecological city indices, and the ecological city development can be attained through a clear model. Moreover, according to Pearson correlation coefficient, the citizens who have had a higher educational level have shown a higher tendency (.585) to help implement the ecological city project.