Spatial Assessment and Analysis of Endogenous Development Zones; the Case Study of Region 3 of Isfahan Metropolis

Endogenous urban development is one of the three policies of urban development, which is presented along with two policies of connected or continuous urban development (creating towns connected to the city and within the official city limits) and separate or intermittently urban development policy (creating new cities at a distance from the mother city). This approach has several comparative advantages over the other two policies. The purpose of this study was spatial assessment and analysis of endogenous development zones in region 3 of Isfahan metropolis.

The present study is applied-developmental in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. The ANP model was used to determine the areas of internal development, and the nearest neighbor index and the Getis-Ord model were used to analyze its clusters.

According to the calculations of ANP model, very high, high, low and very low priority areas for endogenous development had 0.97, 0.91, and 430 hectares, respectively. Therefore, about 188 hectares of the texture of region 3 of Isfahan is prone to internal development. According to the nearest neighbor mean method, the distribution pattern of very high and high priority areas had a z-scoer of -20.85, which indicates a completely cluster distribution pattern of these lands. According to the Getis-Ord Gi model, the priority areas were in the northern and central part and the low priority clusters were in the southern part of the region.

The northern and central parts of Zone 3 are in a good position in terms of land use proximity indicators. In general, certain parts of Region 3 have the potential for internal development. Therefore, the implementation of intermediate development will cause the worn-out tissue of Region 3 to flourish and also to get out of isolation.