عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]چکیده [English]
One of the important and intricate cases for urban planners has been deciding on appropriate locations for future expansion of cities and determination of suitable land for developing. Intricacy and superfluity of appropriate factors in determining the direction of urban growth required using GIS technology and efficient management for prevention of urban sprawl and environment destroying. The main purpose of this article is providing suitable locations for future expansion of human settlement and activities within the metropolitan area of Tabriz.
For this purpose multi-criteria evaluation methods based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) employing for producing and analysis of maps. At first, the natural and human factors have been identified (12 indicators), then 12 layers prepared and the final map of suitable land for development has been produced based on prepared layers by AHP model. Findings of research show that, the metropolitan area of Tabriz has 4665 hectares but, only 41% of its area is suitable or relatively suitable for human settlement expansion and 37/31 % includes inappropriate and unsuitable for this goals. Also; from the view point of spatial distribution , the suitable lands for further development are located mostly in central parts toward the south and non suitable lands in eastern, northern and north west part.