Analysis of urban spatial structure based on the spatial distribution of population in Tehran, A polycentric city morphological approach

Early decentralisation trends, changes in information technology, transport and communication led to more profound structural change as the 20th century continued. Therefore, process of monocentric city model stopped, which it focused on employment in CBD. The monocentric city model represents the base that the polycentric city model was built on. There is still no clear understanding of whether or not polycentric city is either sustainable or economically competitive. On the other hand, the concept of functional polycentric city is less well understood than that of morphological polycentric city. The purpose of this study is analysis of urban spatial structure based on the spatial distribution of population on Tehran. The approach examined is of the polycentric city morphological. Modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) used to determine the spatial analysis unit. The autocorrelation, spatial regression methods, spatial statistics, and polycentric models such as Small & Song, and cut-off have used to analyze the pattern of spatial population distribution. The results showed that the value of the local indicators of spatial association (LISA) for the three statistical periods is positive and close to one. It can be concluded that the spatial distribution of population in Tehran has spatial autocorrelation and a cluster distribution. Experimental results obtained from the slope of the density gradient analysis and spatial statistics showed that Tehran has been transformed from a monocentric city into polycentric, but this structure is still incomplete.