Spatial Analysis of Urban Sprawl and its Effects on Equity of Access to Hospitals in Tehran Megacity

Increasing trend of urbanization particularly in developing countries has led to urban sprawl. Urban sprawl in Tehran has led to several challenges in achieving sustainable development. A spatial analysis on urban sprawl in traffic area zones (TAZ) of Tehran has been investigated for the past two decades (2001-2020) using the Weighted Urban Proliferation (WUP) method. Then, the minimum access distance between each pair of TAZ-hospital has been calculated using Network Analysis and the relation between sprawl determinants and accessibility has been investigated. Finally, the Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients have been calculated. Results show that the sprawl level has decreased significantly in Tehran over the past two decades. Consequently, because of the direct relationship between dispersion and access distance, the maximum distance to the nearest hospitals has been reduced about 3 kilometers. However, the calculated Gini coefficients show a 10% growth over the study period; in a way that, in 2001, 90% of hospital opportunities were distributed among 29% of population, while in 2020 the same share of opportunities are distributed among only 7% of population. Results indicate that urban sprawl reduction can only increase accessibility standards and promoting equity of accessibility requires proper attention and management of socio-economic variables along with urban sprawl.