Geographical Research

The growth pattern of a city is the most critical matters of the recent century. So, recognition of the spatial growth pattern of main cities of regions and countries such as Tehran metropolis is necessary for drawing up suitable policies and achieving sustainable development. In this regard, in the framework of sustainable development and urban smart growth theories, three hypotheses offered about the quality of spatial growth pattern of the Tehran metropolis and then were evaluated in the framework of the analytical-descriptive research method. In this framework, for testing the first hypothesis, the Holdren model was used. For testing the second hypothesis, Gini and Entropy's indexes were used, and for testing the third hypothesis, Moran, Geary and General G indexes were used. The necessary data was collect by librarian method. The results of testing the first hypothesis showed that despite compact and regular growth of the Tehran metropolis during 1335-1355, this city have had a sprawl growth of 75 percent during 1355-1365. But since then this procedure has changed to compact city. In the case of the second hypothesis, the results despite un-confirming this hypothesis, showed that though there are imbalance in population and employment distribution, there are not tend to its increasing. Moreover the results in confirming third hypothesis showed that the Tehran metropolis have had a random development pattern tending to Clustered pattern by forming a hot-spot in its south- south eastern part and a cold spot in its north- north western part.