Analysis of Urban Growth Pattern and its Compatibility with Smart Growth CriteriaCase Study: District 1 of Karaj Municipality

Statement of the Problem: 

Many cities around the world are misusing their natural resources due to their spawl growth. A few approaches have been proposed to prevent such a situation and achieve a form of urban growth that meets the needs of today's urban society while preserving the environment and natural resources. The most acceptable one is smart growth.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the indicators of smart urban growth in District 1 of Karaj municipality.

The data of this descriptive-analytical study were gathered from both documents and a survey. First, the 18 indicators were calculated and analyzed separately. Then, the AHP method in Expert Choice software was used to assign a coefficient for each indicator by 3 sample experts. The urban growth situation is being determined using an invented model. The study area locates in the northeast of Karaj city and it has an area of 859.4 hectares and a population of more than 120 thousand people.

Findings indicated a large gap between urban growth characteristics of the study area and smart growth indicators. The value of sprawl growth was 2.63 and it was close to Ln15 (Number of the neighborhoods). The result of the land use mixing formula was 0.6 which is closer to 1 (maximum land use mixing) than to 0 (uniform land use). The figures of building density indicator were between 70% to 210%. However, the figures for most indicators showed that totally, the study area was in a moderate state of urban smart growth criteria.

Innovation: 

Combining objective and subjective data with a syntactic approach that pays attention not only to physical growth but also to social and economic aspects is the innovation of this study.