Urban development scenarios in the southern part of East Azerbaijan province with a futures research approach

One of the challenges in the process of urban development of developing countries in the future to achieve the desired and sustainable development is their rapid growth. Today, achieving such future development is important and necessary to solve environmental, economic, social, and physical problems, as well as to address existing gaps and determine future perspectives, and to present different scenarios. The purpose of this article is to present different scenarios of urban development in the southern part of East Azerbaijan province. The research method is descriptive-analytical in terms of purpose and exploratory in terms of method. In this research, Mickey Mac software, Wizard scenario and cross-effects can be used to analyze quantitative and qualitative information. The results of this study show that in the study area, 5 key factors are the main actors and influences on the development process, whose situation is not suitable at present. Although the possible scenarios show high hopes for the occurrence of favorable conditions in the southern part of the province, the occurrence of critical conditions is not far from expectation. The results of this study also indicate 11 believable scenarios with different combinations of situations, the probability of occurrence in the southern part of the province, which unfortunately the probability of negative events is the highest probability of occurrence. Although fewer of these scenarios are desirable and most of the 11 scenarios show unfavorable conditions, but the probability of realizing critical conditions in the southern part of the province is much higher than the probability of realizing favorable conditions. Therefore, among the possible scenarios, the first scenario is the most important and probable scenario for the development of the southern part of East Azerbaijan province.