Predicting pattern of urban green space in developing countries; a case study of Iran

Authors and Affiliations: 

a.Mahsa Bazrafshan,b.Felix Kienast*
a.Departement of environmental design engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad university, Tehran, Iran.
b. Swiss Federal Research Institue WSL, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland.

Corresponding author: 
Felix Kienast*
Abstract: 

Urban green space plays an important role in the well-being of residents. However, fast urban growth, climate change and densification of urban dwellings threaten green infrastructure especially in xeric regions such as Iran. Persian gardens provide - over centuries - very successful adaptation strategies towards drought. Nowadays, however, we observe a deterioration of green infrastructure due to fast urban growth and unprecedented drought events. The major aim of our research is to compare the green infrastructure of two Iranian cities in order to study their historical development and the corresponding strategies and main drivers. The gained knowledge shall be input into scenarios for future development and best practice recommendations. The selected cities are Isfahan and Yazd, two ancient cities in Iran that have considerably different patterns and strategies in gardening due to different climate. In order to simulate urban green spaces through time and to make predictions about future states, we select Dowlat-Abad garden in Yazd and Hasht-behest in Isfahan. For the predictive analysis the most popular model - the SLEUTH urban growth model - will be used, a cellular automaton.

Keywords
Urban Sprawl, Urban Green Space, Persian garden, remote sensing

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Oral or poster: 
Oral presentation
Abstract order: 
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