Planning، tourism and leisure in the city of Mashhad with an emphasis on identifying patterns of leisure in urban areas

Among the most important issues in tourism planning is identifying differences in leisure activities of urban residents، This study looks at Mashhad people leisure in a geographical view، In other words، it is going to investigate what patterns of leisure exist in each area،، what approaches should be considered towards these patterns in the planning of tourism in Mashhad? The study areas were 13 Mashhad Municipality areas، To achieve the purpose، residents’ opinions of each region about their tendency toward the major leisure attractions of the city were investigated، Using ArcGIS software، preliminary results of the separated areas were saved in spatial database and their trend toward leisure attractions were determined in the form of maps، The results in this stage showed the tendency towards 10 attractions (including six religious and four natural attractions) in Mashhad، Using ANOVA analysis confirmed a significant difference between the residents’ trends in each area to attractions، which showed the difference in their attitudes towards leisure in Mashhad، Then through the standardization of data obtained from the citizen’ trends and displaying them on a scatter plot، leisure patterns were determined for each area of Mashhad، The results showed that there are tendencies to natural attractions in 4 areas، to religious attractions in 2 areas، a combination of both natural and religious in 4، and in 3 areas there is weak trend to the both، Correlation analysis also showed the head of household’s level of education and income has a positive relationship to the natural attraction trends and a negative relationship to the religious attraction trends، On the other hand، there is a direct relationship between proximity to the natural attractions and trends toward them، but such a relationship was not found about proximity to the natural attractions.