Urban Sprawl and its Impact on Decay of Central Neighborhoods (Case Study: 7-1 Neighborhood in Maragheh)

Over the past several decades, despite billions of dollars spent on various programs, the urban sprawl; has marked effective revitalization even more problematic. In fact urban sprawl and urban decay are not two spate phenomena and we cannot solve one problem without solving the other. Most cities nowadays suffer from these two problems and Maragheh is not an exception. The population of Maragheh raised from 100000 in 1986 up to 149000 in 2006 with an annual growth rate 2 percent. On the other hand, over the same period the urban area increased from 927 hectares to 2597 hectares with an annual growth rate of 5.28 percent. A simple comparison of population growth and the urban area growth from 1986 to 2006 indicates that development of Maragheh was sprawl and its share according to the Holdern model was 61.3 percent.Because of this growth, inner-city neighborhoods have experienced considerable out migration, flight of capital and economical activities, and growth of urban decay.The present paper aims to analysis past urban development patterns and their impacts on inner-city neighborhoods decay. It hypothesized that ''inner-city development'' would be the best alternative to urban sprawl in order to accomplish the twin goals of preserving of open spaces and natural habits and revitalize urban area.