Evaluation and Spatial Analysis of Urban Physical Sustainability in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province

The present study applies quantitative-survey method and secondary data to evaluate and spatial analysis of urban physical sustainability in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province. First, 22 objective indicators of physical sustainability were selected using CVI and CVR methods. Then, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method was applied to evaluate the physical sustainability of the cities. Also, for spatial analysis of the distribution pattern of urban physical sustainability in the province, spatial autocorrelation (Morans I) and inverse distance weighting interpolation (IDW) method were used. Based on PCA method, findings indicated that four principal components (namely; urban landuse, worn textures, intra-urban accesses, infrastructures and communication technologies) with a cumulative variance of 64.548% explained the correlation between research variables to measure and evaluate urban physical sustainability in the province. Based on spatial pattern analysis method, results showed that there is a cluster pattern of sustainability around the whole province as well as a rather concentration of physical sustainability in cities closer to Shahrekord (the province center).