Evaluation of urban settlements of Golestan province with a healthy city approach

Today, the healthy city approach is of great importance in contemporary urban research and has a high degree of study capacity, due to the growing urban population and its negative consequences, which threaten the public health of citizens. Therefore, considering the importance of the issue, the present study evaluates urban settlements of Golestan province with a healthy city approach. The research method is based on the purpose, applied with a descriptive and analytical nature. The focus of this paper is primarily on assessing the health of the city, its history in the world and the onset of healthy city thinking in Iran. Then, as a case study, the 29 urban settlements of Golestan province in 14 county in 2013, using 42 indicators of the Healthy city, in four environmental, health, socio-economic, and health groups, that is adapted from foreign and national valid sources, using the VIKOR model have been evaluated. The results of the research indicate that the level of enjoyment of urban settlements in the counties of the province is not the same as the indicators of healthy city and most of them are in an unfavorable position in having these indicators. Meanwhile, the urban settlements of Turkmen and Kordkuy are the most advantage and Gonbad-e-Kavoos and Maraveh-tapeh are the most disadvantaged settlements. Also, the result of Spearman's correlation in assessing the relationship between the ranking of the urban settlements in the province and their distances from the provincial capital (Gorgan) indicates the correlation between these two factors. For calculating Excel, SPSS software was used to evaluate correlations and ARC GIS software was used to draw maps.