Measuring the spatial distribution of markets, and their optimum locating in Khoramabad using GIS

Providing citizens’ convenient access to different urban services is an important goal of urban planning. Towns with any role, cannot be far away from commercial activities, because the social life of people and meeting their needs, necessitates such activities. Markets are obvious examples of such business and commercial activities which have existed from earlier times. Khorramabad city is among the cities which due to its old fabric and texture has no market which is located based on scientific regulations.The purpose of locating markets in this research, is the obtainment of sustainable economic development, promotion the quality of services to citizens, creating employment opportunities, income, etc.. . The criteria used in this study includes the relative value of land, area, access, centrality, population density, the land form, parking potential. After preparing the Vector and Raster layers of the above criteria, the effect or importance of each of these layers as effective factors on locating the assigned markets was specified, which in this study in order to determine the importance rate and standard weights of layers, ARC GIS software has been used.After prioritizing the used information layers and finally by using GIS, the standard weight of the used layers for locating were obtained. After determining the standard weights, the weighted information layers were overlapped based on their importance rate and the information layers were integrated based on their weight and at last, the final locating maps of daily markets were achieved. The results show that with respect to the existing maps, the existing markets, located markets and the existing daily markets in Khoramabad city have not a suitable and proper spatial distribution and no attention is made to the required standards and parameters for locating such market.