Analyzing the Urban Management Challenges of the New Iranian Towns Based on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

New Iranian towns were created mainly for the goals of reducing population burden and concentrating economic activity on large cities. Despite their thoughtful formation, practically it was not easy to achieve these two goals and many challenges were faced by urban managers in different dimensions. Given that achieving an acceptable level of cohesion in managing new towns requires analyzing and assessing these challenges and identifying the relationship and their impact on each other in a systematic and purposeful way, the goal of this study is to analyze these impacts. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used in the study for routing and determining the main coefficients of impact and measurement is in the form of expert questionnaires as the main tool. Research shows that there is a relatively strong, positive, and meaningful relationship among all the challenges identified and most concerned with the impact of the “institutional-administrative” challenge on the “facilities-services” challenge. But this challenge is significantly influenced by the “finance-budget” challenge, and it also influenced by the policy-making challenge. Similarly, the impact of other challenges on each other has been determined. The result of this study as a guide, while pointing out the focal points of interest for reform and improvement of the new urban management system, provide a good basis for designing a coherent urban management model in the new Iranian towns to improve the quality of citizenship in these towns. Keywords: New Towns, Urban Management Challenges, Structural Equation Modeling.