One of the principles of sustainable urban development is equal access of all citizens to the required services. Basically this matter comes true when different urban lands and resources, equally allocate to the spatial and social units of the city.Sincecommercial and service land uses are used by city dwellers daily, their locating and spatial distribution in cities is very important. Proper distribution of chain stores plays a significant role in reducing transpotation costs, quick supply of goods and services, suitable access to parking and other urban supplementary services. A chain store consists of several co-owned and centralized retail stores. The purpose of this study is improvement on spatial distribution of chain stores in Tabriz. To this end, first, the indicators of chain stores locating identified through available resources and documents and then through quantitative and spatial analysis methods using GIS capabilities, distribution of chain stores in urban areas of Tabriz was studied. Six criteria including population, type of communication, centrality, compatible uses, local equilibrium and radius of access have been used for a comprehensive analysis. After preparing the layers related to the above parameters using analytical tools in Arc Map software, they were integrated and the final layer was extracted. The results show that the distribution pattern of chain stores in Tabriz is random and it doesn't have a specific pattern. Also, the location criteria for the current stores have not been met in a desirable manner.

Regrading population growth and economic development of human societies, the disposal of municipal waste has become an environmental concern all around the world. Landfilling is a common way for the disposal of municipal wastes. Improper landfill, however, may cause a series of inverse impacts. Siting of landfills is only licensed under strict environmental considerations. This study is carried out to environmentally evaluate the active municipal landfills in Mazandaran province according to the national regulations of the Iranian Department of Environment and Waste Management organization. The Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and Hierarchical analysis processes (AHP) have been used to spatial analysis and to weight effective criteria in this study. Restricted areas were scored beside permitted areas to classify and rate the active landfills in the state. Totally, 13 sites are used for landfilling in this province. By developing the spatial competency map, these sites are evaluated environmentally. The results show that generally the active landfills of the Mazandaran cities have very low suitability while most of them non-standard and placed in the buffers of restricted areas. As a result of this study, the municipal landfill of Fereydoonkenar found to be the worst site between these 13 landfills in the Mazandaran province.

Land use mapping and land use maps related to the prediction of spatial-temporal changes provide a major portion of the information required by urban planners and administrators to adopt correct measures and make principled decisions to achieve sustainable urban development. The purpose of this investigation was to examine land use and land cover changes in Yasuj city in the past and, consequently, to predict the spatial pattern of the land structure in the near future. In this study, the satellite object-based image analysis of the images taken by Landsat satellite in 1990, 2000, and 2018 was used to make a dynamic modeling of Yasuj lands use changes. Moreover, a combination of the Markov chain and automated cells were employed to predict land use changes. The results showed that during the period between 1991 and 2018, the area of pasturelands decreased by 7.18%, while the total area of residential areas increased by 2.02%. That is to say, the spread of Yasuj city has led to the increase in the residential and irrigated cultivation lands, while it has decreased pastures, forests, dryland cultivation areas, barren lands, and gardens. Furthermore, the development process of Yasuj city shows its tendency to physical-spatial expansion in all dimensions. Moreover, the land use map for the years 2030 and 2040 was predicted by the CA-Markov model. The results showed that during the period 2018-2040, pasturelands, dryland farming areas, and forests will decrease 1.08%, 1.03%, and 1.47%, respectively, residential areas will increase by 4.17%, and the waterbody will change a little. The results of the study show the high efficiency of the CA-Marcov model for monitoring the trend of changes, especially urban growth, for the coming years based on the pattern of changes in the past years.

One of the important aspects of development from the spatial perspective is the evaluation of the effective long-term processes on the institutional mechanisms of a land and the determination of share of the respective areas in this regard. For many years, economy has been hurriedly moving toward a knowledge-based stance, and the countries that have neglected this movement have been deprived of fundamental developments. In this applied study, which adopts an analytical approach and a quantitative view, the necessity of the proposition of a strategic attitude to the two-way relationship between higher education and the industry sector of Iran is addressed. To this end, first an overview of the previous studies and theoretical principles are made. Then, following the questions and hypotheses and determining the evaluation and analysis methods, the detailed information on over 11 variables (including panel data of 31 provinces of Iran from 2016 to 2019) are collected. These are then analyzed and tested using Excel, Eviews, and Arc GIS through spatial econometrics, generalized method of moments (GMM), weight matrix and geographic-spatial correlation (λ), and KP-HET diagnostic tests. According to the results, the spatial correlation between higher education and industry in Iran is highly significant, and the shock resulting from the industrial and educational development is completely mutual. That is to say, the shock inflicted upon a given province has spread to other provinces of Iran. The findings of this study confirm the effects of the emphasis on the centralization policy stereotype and the prescriptive – rather than land-use-based – roles given to certain parts of Iran. In fact, the very high spatial correlation demonstrates that the nine less-developed provinces of Iran have experienced trivial industrial growth due to a lack of higher education infrastructure. On the other hand, the results of this study shows how the market demand for labor of the university graduates is aligned with the functions of the knowledge-based industries of Iran.