Easurement and evaluation of urban sprawl A Case study The Sari city

Urban sprawl is a process in which extensive urban areas are spread in surrounding lands and nearby rural and agricultural lands, and the city's physical expansion takes on a speed greater than population growth. The accelerated and uneven physical spatial development of Iranian cities in the last few decades has brought adverse social, economic, and physical effects and consequences. The exorbitant costs of city transportation and services, energy waste, waste of material, and social capital in the city are among the most important problems of cities in the discussion of unfavorable development of physical space and low density of cities. The current research aims to investigate the phenomenon of urban sprawl and measure the amount of sprawl in Sari city. This research is descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose and practice in applying the results. Also, in terms of the type of method, it has a quantitative methodology of the factor analysis type. The research results showed that 16 effective indicators in urban sprawl in Sari city could be categorized into six factors: density, accessibility, net density, irregularity of built areas, activity space, and construction parts. Also, the results of the investigation of these factors and the overall dispersion index in the regions of Sari city showed that 176.60 hectares of the area and 18124 people of the population of Sari city are in the very low dispersion area, as well as 598.31 hectares of the area and 74540 The population of Sari city is located in a very scattered area.