Evaluation of spatial development scenarios with future research approach, case: Aras Free Zone

Today, commercial and industrial free zones in Iran are one of the government's tools to realize the extrovert strategy in the globalization paradigm, on the basis of the political economy of space, and are considered to be one of the main focus areas for the presence of investors From the beginning of the formation of free land areas, it is the most important factor among other production and trade factors. And what needs to change after several decades have passed since the formation of free zones is to change the approach in planning in these areas to heal the problems of these areas. In this article, with a foresight approach, after identifying the most important factors for the formulation of scenarios, formulation of strategies, planning and policy making to achieve the desired scenarios have been provided. The research method is based on new methods of future research, explanatory, and documentary and environmental survey methods are used to collect information. For this purpose, in the first stage, with the method of environmental scanning, 51 variables in the environment of Mic Mac software in the form of 4 groups of factors The factor affecting the future state of spatial development of Ares Azad Zone was identified.
And finally, how these factors affect each other and the future status of these settlements were determined by direct and indirect methods and 13 key factors were selected. Finally, Scenario Wizard software was used to extract scenarios. And by removing weak scenarios and scenarios with high inconsistency, finally seven suitable scenarios were recognized among them, the first and fifth scenarios have more points to be evaluated.