Investigating the Capabilities and Environmental Bottlenecks of the Physical Development of Euclid City using Satellite Images

"Physical development" of the city is a dynamic and continuous process, as a result of which, the physical bed of the city in the vertical and horizontal directions is quantitatively and qualitatively redundant. In today's era, unprincipled and unmeasured physical development is one of the issues and challenges of urban planning and management in underdeveloped countries.The present research was conducted with the aim of evaluating and determining the capabilities and constraints of the natural environment for the physical expansion of the city of Eghlid. The study area included a circular zone with a radius of 10 kilometers from the center of the city of Eghlid. Environmental variables included climate type, precipitation, temperature, elevation above sea level, land slope, lithology, distance from fault lines, topographical type, distance from rivers, well density, canal density, land use type, and land cover, and their data were collected from various library sources such as scanned maps, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and statistical yearbooks. Data preparation, management, and analysis were performed in the Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. To understand the favorable and unfavorable natural conditions for physical development, a classification of each environmental variable was used. Finally, the overlap of all spatial layers related to environmental variables was used to determine the optimal directions for future physical development of the target city. The results of interpreting satellite images over the past 30 years indicate the expansion of the city in a northeast-southwest direction. The overlap analysis in the form of a final land suitability map for physical development showed that the city of Eghlid faced significant limitations for its physical development in the north, east, and to some extent, the south, with 40% of the study area's land being in an unfavorable condition for physical development. In contrast, 25% of the area of Eghlid had favorable conditions for physical development, primarily in various western directions (northwest, west, and southwest). Among the factors examined, topography and geomorphology have played a significant and clear role in the past and present urbanization of Eghlid and will continue to be determining factors in its future development.