Reasons for the incompetence of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program in Iran's urban development plans

The unplanned growth and development of cities in most regions of the world has led to the destruction of agricultural and natural lands. Transfer of Development Right (TDR) is one of the land use approaches and policies that prevent the destruction of agricultural lands, valuable natural lands such as forests and historically valuable land uses in the countries of Western Europe and America. During the last decades TDR approach raised in the other countries of the world. This approach seeks to reduce or eliminate development in places that should be protected, and instead encourages the willingness to increase development to areas that demand growth. The concept of TDR is proposed in Iran since the 1980s and several researches and urban development plans carried out in this field but has never been used practically. In this research, the aim is to investigate implementation obstacles and the reasons for the failure of this approach in urban development plans in Iran. The methods used in this research are Delphi and Analysis Hierarchy (AHP). The results obtained from this research indicates that economic factors are the most important and effective factors and this criterion has a greater effect than other factors on the realization of TDR programs.