Calibration and validation of models predicting urban growth have been largely developed using internal variables. Further investigation is required to improve model’s calibration and validation mixing internal and external variables. To reach this objective, a spatial zoning approach simulating long-term expansion of Mashhad, the second largest city of Iran, was presented in this study. Spatial zoning approaches distinguish local-scale urban dynamics in districts with different socioeconomic characteristics. Thiessen polygons were used to identify districts with different morphology and functional attributes. Urban growth was subsequently simulated for each district using a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network and Markov chains (MC) analysis. MLP and MC algorithms were respectively used to derive transition maps from non-urban to urban use of land and to determine spatial evolution of built-up areas at the metropolitan scale. Results of simulations based on spatial zoning were compared with outcomes of traditional urban growth models. Spatial zoning improved significantly model’s accuracy in respect to more traditional simulation modes. The approach proposed here is appropriate when simulating land-use changes under discontinuous urban expansion.

Instrumental to the concept of sustainability must be the search for feasible ways to implement sustainability, especially connecting heritage and tourism. This should be understood in relationship with the persistence in time and the current and future conception of the human-made environment. This study deals with the spatial characterization over time of the urban sprawl close to and around two important archaeological areas: Kom el Shoqafa, Egypt and Shush, Iran. For both of the investigated sites, change detection analyses have been conducted using satellite declassified Corona and multidate Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery available for free from the USGS Earth Explorer. The study involves the collection of Corona 1964, Landsat TM 1984, Landsat ETM+ 1998 and L8 2016. The past and current urban and agricultural areas have been extracted by using consolidated classification techniques. Analyses and quantification of the spatial dimension of the urban expansion showed that, for both the study sites, urban areas have expanded to a significant percentage. In particular, the analysis of Corona and Landsat TM, ETM+, L8 imagery in Kom el Shoqafa revealed that, for the urban area, the evaluation of the change detection presented generally increasing chronology in both of the study areas, but for the agriculture lands, we can see that the changes sometimes decreased and sometimes increased. As a whole, outputs from our investigations clearly highlight that the current availability free of charge of long term satellite time series provides an excellent low cost tool for several applications including environmental monitoring and change detection to observe and quantify urban and land use changes from a global down to a local scale. We examine the capabilities of integrating remote sensing and GIS and suggest some innovative solutions to preserve the archaeological sites.

Cities play a vital role in local development providing a high education level, specialized jobs and advanced services. When assessing living conditions and wellbeing in cities, economic indicators alone are generally unable to evaluate the inherent complexity of the ‘quality of life’ issue in urban environments. With rapid urbanization, shortage of infrastructures and services emerged in metropolitan regions of developing countries, leading to disadvantaged settlements, urban poverty, lower citizens’ satisfaction, and an overall decline in life quality. Based on these premises, the present study illustrates a subjective investigation of life quality in an emerging economy such as Iran, focusing on Arak, the fourth largest industrial pole of the country. Based on a literature review on quality of life in industrial cities of emerging economies, subjective indicators of citizens’ satisfaction on living quality in Arak were identified and quantified using empirical results from a field survey. Results of our study show that the overall satisfaction for living quality in Arak is rather low, reaching the lowest rank in the issues of environmental sanitation and public transportation. Lack of investments in urban infrastructure justifies the low citizens’ perception of life quality in Arak city. The paper concludes outlining the urgent need of homogeneous and comparable macro- and micro-data on multiple aspects of quality of life at both city-level and metropolitan-level in emerging economies.

With the increasing concentration of population and economic activities in metropolitan regions, dwelling shortages and housing quality have become critical issues in urban management. Town plans considering social, economic, political, and cultural features of local communities have been developed with the aim of supporting housing, especially in emerging economies. In Iran, the ‘Mehr Housing’ Plan has been considered as one of the most relevant strategies for social housing since the 2000s. However, the acceptance of ‘Mehr Housing’ plans at the community scale has been rather low, reflecting the fact that it is a top-down, non-participatory policy. The present study investigates the most important factors affecting social acceptance of ‘Mehr Housing’ plans by interviewing 45 experts through a structured questionnaire that evaluated multiple analyses’ dimensions of housing and urban planning in Iran. Results showed that six dimensions (physical, institutional-managerial, economic, socio-cultural, legal, and locational) had contributed to social dissatisfaction with ‘Mehr Housing’ local initiatives. In particular, socio-cultural and legal dimensions were demonstrated to have a large impact on local communities’ dissatisfaction.