Analysis of drivers of urban sprawl (Case study: Ahvaz city)

Urban sprawl and its environmental impacts are important components of global environmental change research and are a key issue for sustainable development. To understand and manage land use change and to direct urban development plans, it is important to examine the drivers of urban sprawl. The purpose of the research is analysis of drivers of urban sprawl in Ahvaz city. This research is descriptive-analytic and in terms of objective, applied analytic. The method of data collection is library-documentary and survey. To complete the questionnaire, the opinions of 50 researchers who have conducted research in relation to the city of Ahvaz and related managers and experts have been used. In order to investigate the effect of dimensions (drivers), the second order confirmatory factor analysis was used in LISREL software. The 45 identified driver affecting the urban sprawl of Ahvaz are classified into 7 dimensions including management, legal, social, economic, physical-spatial, environmental, and transportation. The results show that the economic dimension with a coefficient of 0.88 has the highest impact, followed by social (0.87), management (0.76), physical-spatial (0.72), legal (0.71), transportation (0.61) and environmental dimensions, respectively. (0.58) are located.Urban sprawl and its environmental impacts are important components of global environmental change research and are a key issue for sustainable development. To understand and manage land use change and to direct urban development plans, it is important to examine the drivers of urban sprawl. The purpose of the research is analysis of drivers of urban sprawl in Ahvaz city. This research is descriptive-analytic and in terms of objective, applied analytic. The method of data collection is library-documentary and survey. To complete the questionnaire, the opinions of 50 researchers who have conducted research in relation to the city of Ahvaz and related managers and experts have been used. In order to investigate the effect of dimensions (drivers), the second order confirmatory factor analysis was used in LISREL software. The 45 identified driver affecting the urban sprawl of Ahvaz are classified into 7 dimensions including management, legal, social, economic, physical-spatial, environmental, and transportation. The results show that the economic dimension with a coefficient of 0.88 has the highest impact, followed by social (0.87), management (0.76), physical-spatial (0.72), legal (0.71), transportation (0.61) and environmental dimensions, respectively. (0.58) are located.