Analysis of the Patterns of Physical Development of Iranian Cities According to Population, Natural and Physical Variables

摘要: Introduction Urbanization is one of the most important human phenomena creating enormous impacts on the environment at local, regional and global scales. Although urbanization in the form of land-cover occupies less than 2% of the Earths land surface, there is plentiful evidence that human disturbance due to urbanization has significantly altered the natural landscape. Cities are currently home to nearly half of the world population and over the next 30 years most of the two-billion people of global population is expected to occur in urban areas. In the developing world, Urban sprawl is the common characteristic of many fast growing cities across the globe that consumes agricultural lands around the cities and has pressure on natural environment.  In the first half of 20th century, the majority of people were living in rural areas and cities had a slow growth. However, after mid 1950s due to the improvement in medical conditions as well as rural urban migration, it is faced with rapid population growth in urban areas. Improvement in the socio-economic conditions, especially increase in the private car ownership in the following decades, led to the low density of physical expansion of many cities in the country. This paper attempts to examine the status of Iranian cities based on two main patterns of continuous and discontinuous physical development and seek for the association of major social and environmental factors related to growth patterns of urban areas in the country.   Methodology A descriptive analytical method has been employed in this research. The main source of data for the study has been driven from Google Earth images and Google …