The Role of Urban Tourism in the Physical Development of Kermanshah City

In recent years, due to mental health problems related to city life, urban tourism has achieved importance. Tourism has become an effective factor on the applicability of city lands. Kermanshah city has always been an attraction for tourists for its ancient historical background, historical, cultural and natural attractions around the city, its cross-border situation and the passing of Karbala pilgrims through this region; therefore tourism can provide background for the development of this region. This study is an applied research with descriptive-analytical nature. The aim of this study is to analyze the role of tourism in the physical development of the city in the past two decades and to assess its role in increasing tourism infrastructure. Questionnaires for people and authorities were used and were analyzed by SPSS software and Spearman correlation coefficient. For matching the information, the land-use maps of years 1365 and 1389 were provided with the use of satellite images and Envi and GIS softwares. These maps present the direction and procedure of urban development and the change rate of agricultural and arid land-use to urban use. By analyzing the urban user maps of the years 1381 and 1395, areas of other land users were compared with tourism user. The results show that through analyzing the variables of questionnaire, tourism has had 74% effect on the physical development of the city. This is confirmed by comparing the rate of tourism use in the years 1381 and 1395, which shows an increase of about 6 times.