Assessing the university development impact on Metropolitan Urban Region (area of study: North East of Tehran)

Abstract Studying the spatial structure of urban systems has recently earned lofty position. An interaction between settlements is considered in new regional system. Although ongoing efforts toward decentralization of Tehran metropolitan are pursued, developments of educational poles have been reduced in certain axis during the recent years. However, in conformity with comprehensive surveys, it is obviously distinguished that the role of education has been ignored in metropolitan regions. To the same token, Tehran metropolitan spatial structure analysis is also made by using analytical method from 1996 to 2013. Furthermore, it is also maintained that the effect of educational poles in mutation of the spatial structure of Tehran metropolitan, specifically the Universities located in Firoozkooh and Haraz road from the beginning of 1986 to 2013. As a result, it is assumed that the spatial structure of Tehran metropolitan is becoming balanced system which is going to be transformed into polycentric urban region by considering the hierarchical and network analysis.Surveying the Entropy index,strength of links and centrality of the nodes, illustrate that the creation of Azad University has given rise to acceleration of travel flows with remarkable growing trend over the recent years which leads to be one of the factor of changing the pattern of Tehran Metropolitan Area structure from monocentric to polycentric.