Measuring of urban development sustainability with SAFE method: the case of some metropolitans of IRAN

The urban development sustainability is a subject of interest for regional policy makers and a planner, so introducing certain approached for measuring it, is very important. In this paper, we compares the several approaches have been proposed to test sustainability, and propose the suitable approach for measuring urban development sustainability. Then, we measure urban development sustainability index for 6 metropolitans of IRAN. The results of comparing several approaches show that SAFE model is the best. The SAFE model compared to the aforementioned approaches appears to be quite holistic in that it uses a balanced representation of environmental, social, economical and political aspects. The results of measuring urban development sustainability indicate that the most sustainable metropolitan of IRAN in 1386, is Esfahan.