An Analysis of Influential contexts and processes in Spatial Organization of Urban Poverty (Case Study: Tabriz Metropolis)

Urban poverty is one of the biggest challenges in both developing and developed countries, which is a major obstacle for most governments to achieve the indicators of sustainable development. Therefore, accurate identification of poor areas as well as contexts and processes affecting the formation and spread of poverty is one of the necessities of urban planning and management to deal with the spread of this phenomenon.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the areas of urban poverty and also to analyze the contexts and processes affecting the spatial organization of poverty in Tabriz metropolis.

The research method in the present study is mixed (quantitative-qualitative) with analytical-exploratory nature, which in order to collect research data has been used from the information available in the statistical blocks of 1996 and 2016 in Tabriz and to interview the managers and academic elites specializing in urban poverty (15 people based on the Delphi method) and to analyze the data, has been used the Q-factor analysis model and the nearest neighbor index (NNI) in GIS software.

Studied Areas:

The geographical area of the research includes 10 regions of Tabriz metropolis.

Findings show that the contexts and processes of spatial expansion and organization of poverty in Tabriz metropolis include the three main factors of inefficiency of the management structure and macroeconomic system, discriminatory management structure and economic system and the characteristics of immigrants and low-income people, which in total, they explain 83.536% of the total variance.

The results show that in 1996, most of the suburban areas of the city were in an unfavorable situation, while in 2016, the organization and spatial distribution of poor areas in the city and the distribution of clusters of poor areas during this period of 20 years has been reduced.