Application of Spatial Models in Prediction of Urban Spatial Growth of the city-Sari

Urban development and migration from rural to urban areas is one of the major global phenomena. Small and isolated population centers, is increasingly converting to large urban areas that are clearly associated with becoming natural areas for urban use. The issue in developing countries, including Iran, for some reason, such as lack of appropriate distribution of resources and services at the national and regional plans is more severe. In some cities, rapid growth has scattered and fragmented state and has been associated with destruction of agricultural outskirts and wastage of environment resources, especially in the northern cities of Iran that have ecologically valuable lands. To respond to the principle of sustainable development, and to preserve this valuable land, planning need to be aware of the city’s situation in the future to make an appropriate policy.So Sari’s unbridled growth and its different outcomes (environmental, economic, social and physical) forced the writer to guide and control the spread of Sari. Therefore, it has been tried in this project to predict Sari’s urban growth, to provide a basis for planning and policy for city of Sari and the surrounding environment.Physical development is a dynamic and continuous process and if this process become fast with no plan, not only it doesn’t have a proper physical composition of urban spaces, citizens will torment many problems in access to urban services. Also irrational use of urban land, would bring forth detrimental effects on the environment. Also in Iran, these changes have been contained negative impact on social and economic aspects, like lack of coordination among land, urban network and environment patterns and ecological balance of the city.Following paper that has been developed to evaluate the approaches and models of urban growth prediction and use an appropriate model for the sample (City of Sari), is looking forward to provide an accurate prediction of the rate and direction of growth of the city- Sari and its surrounding areas to be an useful guide as a decision- making support system for future planning of the city.In this project by paying attention to goals and facilities, deductive and inductive research methods have been used. Therefor the concepts, theories and approaches related to the development and growth, land, land cover and spatial models have been studied. Then using the inductive method, appropriate model by evaluating different models of city is selected. Finally, after identifying the sample has been studied, selected model for forecasting its growth were conducted.Results of this research showed that the model, SLEUTH, due to its ability to perform spatial-temporal dynamic model, independence to locations, and ability to concurrent simulations of four different types of growth would be more suitable than other models which have been investigated to predict the growth of Sari. Also findings show that the growth of the city by 1410, will be 394 hectares. This growth will be in the West, Northwest, North and East areas of the city, due to the intrinsic growth in these areas.