Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
Today, many planning experts and theorists of regional sciences acknowledge the fact that urban area, in addition to villages and towns, has become a new form of settlement for mankind. There are main structural and functional differences between urban areas and villages/towns. Urban areas are of some potentialities, the realization of which requires an appropriate knowledge of urban areas and a correct way of determination of urban area limits, and subsequently, adequate planning and management. It is evident that an appropriate planning of urban areas is feasible through scientificly determining their borders. In Iran, urban areas have been recognized since 1995, and various efforts have been made to determine them scientifically. In practice, however, it seems that the determination of the areas are mainly based on political-administrative divisions. Since Tehran urban area is the largest urban zone in all over the country and has national and international functions, any planning and policy-making for that are requires precise and scientific determination of its urban limits. The present research studied the current commonly-used methods, and then proposed ‘factor analysis’ as a complementary method for determination of the limits of Tehran urban area based on socioeconomic indicators the analysis of indicators. 50 socioeconomic indicators at township level were obtained, and then a factor analysis was performed using SPSS software. Finally, the results were linked to GIS map of Tehran province, and after various layers had been prepared, the output of the research was obtained within the frameworks of a thematic map. This study revealed that taking use of factor analysis, the limits of Tehran urban area are the same as those of Tehran province excluding Firoozkouh and Nazarabad townships.
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