Spatial Planning Strategies of Border Areas in the First to Fifth Economic, Social, and Cultural Development Plans of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Spatial planning is a set of measures to organize the distribution of human and activities carried out in the geographical space. Each area should enjoy a range of economic and social activities based on its capabilities, needs, and situation. Spatial planning is the basis of organizing regional development and it is the main instrument for regional and national planning and policy making; it provides the basis for the preparation of socio-economic development plans for each area or country. Since for the fulfillment of development objectives all social resources, including human, economic, spatial, and environmental resources should be used and making use of all these elements needs planning, spatial planning is the basis of comprehensive development plans and projects and connects spatial, social, and economic planning, or as a whole in the form of comprehensive planning, in regional and national scale. Border areas have special characteristics due to their contacts with the external environments. The cross-border exchanges and spatial connections between the adjacent countries as well as the various vulnerabilities and threats posed by this issue necessitate special care to the process of development planning in these areas. The aim of the present research was to investigate the employed strategies for spatial plannig in brder areas in Five-Year economic, social, and cultural development plans of Islamic Republic of Iran (1st to 5th Plan).

In general, and especially in the 3rd and 4th plans, the economic strategy is more important. Also, spatial differences have not been considered in 5-year development plans; strategies ignored the differences in the various border areas of the country and looked at all areas in the same way. In addition, a special type of strategy is focused in each plan.