The Significance of “Future Studies” in Urban Sus-tainable Development Scenarios (Case Study: Shiraz City)

Today, achieving sustainable urban development is one of the most important goals of urban managers in all devel-oped and most developing countries. Since the urban sus-tainable development is influenced by various economic, socio-cultural and environmental factors, achieving this, in present and in the future, requires accurate identification of the key factors affecting it, as well as the effects these fac-tors have on each other. This research’s goal, in the first step is identify key drivers effective on sustainable development in Shiraz and the influence these propellers on each other and in the second step is achieving favorable scenarios for sustainable urban development in Shiraz in the future. This research, in terms of purpose, is a practical and in terms of nature and method is analytical and exploratory that is done based on new methods of future science research and it has been done in three steps determine key indicators through the Delphi method and identify key drivers using the Mic-Mac Software based on cross-impact analysis method and provide favorable scenarios using Scenario Wizard Software. The sample was in the first stage 50 experts from Shiraz management and it was in the second stage 20 person and in the third stage, there were 10 person who were chosen purposefully. In the first stage, results showed an influence by the total of 10 key factors in the sustainable development of Shiraz .Secondly, two favorable scenarios for sustainable development of Shiraz which had the most favorable status in every key driver is presented