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In recent years, some researchers have used the concept of "Borrowed size" as a justification for the efficiency of small and medium-sized cities in Poly-centric urban regions. They believe that smaller cities located near or within an integrated functional urban area can take advantage of the population, facilities, and amenities of larger cities while avoiding the agglomeration costs of larger cities such as traffic, high housing prices, and congestion. In this regard, the present article tries to use this concept, in addition to explaining the growth of the furniture industry in the city of Bahnamir, to open the way for its application in urban and regional policies. For this purpose, the applicability of this concept in Bahnamir was measured in four phases: first, specialization and concentration using locational coefficient and firm density, second, a geographical overlap of demand market by connectivity field index, third measurement polycentricity using Green indicator and entropy of daily travel flow data, and finally, the balance between agglomeration economies and diseconomies using Correspondence analysis. Findings show that the city has been able to access the market demand of larger and coastal cities, lower production costs due to cheap land prices, land ownership and cheaper labor, and increasing returns become into a specialized furniture market that achieves better performance than larger cities by increasing competition, lowering prices, diversity and competition. In this regard, it is suggested that this concept could be used as support to reconsider the development role of small and medium-sized cities.

Introduction One of the important areas of urban governance is urban policy-making. Due to the increasing population and urbanization, attention to the issue of urban governance as the basis of urban policy-making and urban planning has doubled. For this purpose, there must be a clear understanding of the referentials, through which with policy-making and planning for urban people can be proceeded. Determining this big picture in the Islamic Republic of Iran causes a coherent plan in cities and avoids daily decisions, thus creating competitive, cohesive, and accountable cities. The urbanization trend in Iran is increasing in a way that its urban population has increased from 54.3 to 74% from 1986 to 2016. Therefore, in the present study, the various themes existing in the 6 development programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran were examined, along with the growth of population, to become more familiar with the resulting changes in the policy-makers’ mindset. Urban policy-making is a branch of public policy-making knowledge, which enables urban policymakers to become aware of policy-making and its network in urban areas. Materials & Methods Analysis of themes provides data reduction, through which qualitative data are segmented, classified, summarized, and reconstructed. In the current research, the theme position model was used in the theme network. This method has the 3 levels of basic themes, organizing themes, and global themes. Discussion of Results & Conclusions In the summary of the existing development programs in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the aspects of efficiency, decentralization, equality, transparency, accountability, spiritual heritage, health, and security, which were appropriate to the specific culture and conditions in Iran, could be seen. 24 basic themes, including the use of new technologies, culture of productivity, local income, attention to each region, government, downsizing, delegation, strengthening civil society, proper communication with the private sector, poverty reduction, attention to specific groups, attention to women, historical heritage, preservation of prior identity, access to resources, monitoring and evaluation, citizenship rights, citizenship education, effective civil society participation, crime prevention policies, social problems, health policy, food policy, environmental protection, and pollution prevention, were identified. The organizing themes were made of 12 components, including performance promotion, financial independence, subsidiarity, sustainability, attention to minorities, equitable access, preservation of national-religious heritage, transparency, citizen-centered governance, civic participation, human security, and environmental health. The specific referential point in the documents of Islamic development in Iran could be mentioned as follows: the global theme of efficiency focused on the basic theme of productivity, which had the characteristics of attracting specialized manpower, training managers, and work conscience. The global theme of decentralization was the basic theme of attention to each region, in which attention was paid to education and cultural, artistic, and sports services in each region. In the global theme of equality, special attention was paid to the themes of special attention to groups, such as veterans, martyrs' families, education of exceptional children, attention to women, and strengthening family institution. The global theme of preserving and strengthening spiritual heritage referred to features, such as paying attention to celebrities, the infallible Imams’ manners, preservation of Persian scripts and language, and Islamic-Iranian civilization. Finally, the global theme of both security and health focused on social issues, such as eradication of addiction and fighting against it and psychosis and mobilization of all government agencies. In comparison with the international documents and indicators, the special points of Iranian development programs included productivity culture, attention to each region, attention to specific groups and women, preservation of a priori identities, and social problems.

Climate change is the result of human activities such as fossil fuel consumption and land use changes. While cities occupy only two percent of the Earth surface, they account for 71 to 76 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Since the pattern of production and consumption in the Iranian economy is based on fossil fuels, the concentration of population and activity in metropolises has increased the consumption of these fuels and the centralized emission of greenhouse gases. The purpose of the present study is to analyze and compare production-based and consumption-based approaches for measuring greenhouse gas emissions in urban areas and then implementing them in Tehran metropolis. The research method is descriptive-analytical, and the data are collected through documentary studies. The 1995 IPCC guidelines are used to measure greenhouse gas emissions. The statistical population of the study is Tehran metropolis and its fossil fuel consumption in a period of 11 years (2005 to 2016). Tehran has high per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, which is due to its pattern of production, distribution and consumption based on fossil fuels and associated lifestyles. This has turned the city into the largest emitter of these gases. The results of calculations with the IPCC (Production-Based Approach) show a per capita increase in the CO2 emissions of Tehran over a 10-year period (4.94 and 5.09 tons per citizen in 2006 and 2016). Also, using a consumption-based approach, the per capita carbon footprint of each citizen emerges to be 7.77 tons per year. Finally, the carbon dioxide emissions per capita of the city is compared with some other metropolises in the world. The results show that the per capita emissions in Tehran are higher than in other large metropolitan areas such as Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and London.

Physical resistance is one of the factors influencing the resilience of communities. The influencing physical and geographical features in this regard can be evaluated in disasters. The purpose of this research is to analyze the physical resistance of certain areas in Noorabas against earthquake so as to recognize and compare the indicators and significant factors involved. The required data were collected through library work and from the general census database of population and housing in 1395 and 1390 as well as the comprehensive dvelopment plan of Noorabad Mamassani in 1395. In this research, the Copeland’s method was used to rank the resilience in the urban districts. For this purpose, Tapsis, Coopras, and Moora methods were first used to rank the districts in terms of resilience and then the Copeland’s method served to determine their final rank individually. The results indicate that district 4 in area 1 is the most resilient, while districts 4 in areas 2 and 3 have the least resilience.

Background: Substance abuse is one of the most common social problems in societies. In order to perform preventing actions, it is essential to consider the condition of substance abusers along with standard drug therapy. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the status of life skills and family health among substance abusers, and compare it with healthy cases. Methods: This study was performed on 240 cases (120 individuals in each group). After obtaining consent from individuals and recording demographic data, life skills were measured based on the ten dimensions of life skills according to World Health Organization, and family health based on Family-of-Origin Scale. Chi-square, Student t, and ANCOVA tests were used to compare the data. Findings: Subjects with a history of substance abuse were significantly less educated (P < 0.001), unemployed (P < 0.001), with poorly educated spouses (P < 0.001), and homemakers (P < 0.001). On the other hand, family health, and life skills and subscales (self-awareness skills, communication skills, decision-making skills, and problem solving skills) were significantly lower in the addicts compared to healthy people (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Family function determines and affects its member's physical, social, mental, and moral health, and an unhealthy family has long-term and widespread outcomes on its members. Considering the low score of life skills in people with a history of substance abuse, and the role of these skills in increasing individual and social abilities, it is necessary to codify interventions to educate these patients.

In recent years, there has been extensive literature on spatial structure of metropolitan areas and its economic consequences, with emphasis on concepts of poly-centricity and agglomeration economies. Defenders of polycentric regions claim that these areas can make a balance between advantages and disadvantages of agglomeration to create competitive advantages comparing with mono-centric regions, while avoiding excessive concentration and congestion of competitor region. However, there are few studies that have examined these approaches adaptively. Hence, this paper aims to make a comparative study of two metropolitan areas of Shiraz and central Mazandaran to investigate some of the claims about links between spatial structure optimization and advantages of accumulation. The Methodology of the research is based on descriptive and statistical analysis such as Ciccone-Hall and Herfindahl index. The results showed that the spatial structure of the region with emphasis on the concept of polycentric and distribution is scattered and polycentric pattern of central region of Mazandaran against centralized and mono-centric Shiraz metropolitan area. In this context, from the perspective of the consumer, the lack of a dominant urban culture and urban environment should be considered as an important factor in the failure to achieve urbanization advantages. This is an obstacle to achieving higher performance services and facilities, especially lowering private sector investment. However, the findings from the analysis defend relatively equal diversification of production in region of Central Mazandaran against Shiraz metropolitan area, and consider it as a big factor to create complementary links between urban centers in the region. Also, it seems a polycentric pattern without sharing their resources in order to provide more facilities and Infrastructures in regional level cannot be defined in achieving localization advantages as a close rival to mono-centric metropolitan area.

Cities are considered as the bed for innovation and a place for driving creative energy of human being and also play an effective role in human capital concentration and management. Creativity in two areas of industry and creative class need an appropriate and desirable background for flourishing. Hence most experts believe that polycentric-network structures due to their own specific spatial structure have more advantages and priority in attracting such industries and creative classes. So this article, by descriptive-analytical method examines the effective components and aspects in attracting creative industries in the metropolitan area of central Mazandarn which includes four main and large cities of the province as Sari, Ghaemshahr, Babol and Amol. In total, 14 indicators in five approaches of historical and cultural heritage, Agglomeration advantages, dependentdiversity , human capital and creative class have been tested .density of ccultural and historical heritage, company size, share of professionals out of total employment, Reverse Herfindahl index, population as the potential market size, dependentdiversity index,-Hal Sysuh index, entropy index, the accumulation of educated people, index, share of educated people from job applicants, the share of immigrants of other provinces form the indices of this study.the results showed that this metropolitan area lacks an efficient and desirable diversity and demand threshold; the reason of this can be attributed to the fragmented nature of the region and lack of a well-connected metropolitan structure. Also optimum concentration of economic activities of creative jobs has not been able to incorporate the relevant activities together to produce products with better quality. In contrast this area provides a suitable environment for attracting creative classes which some issues such as concentration of cultural and historical facilities of cities, cultural acceptance of other ethnic groups and high capacity for absorbing new technologies approves this matter.

The growth and development pattern or city form is defined as spatial pattern of human activities. At present the city pattern is divided into two groups as horizontal or sprawl and vertical or compact. Evidences show that cities are grown unplanned in recent years and the cities' limits have expanded several times than their primary area. Thus, planners and policy makers are trying to identify the physical pattern of cities to manage and direct the city growth in line with sustainable development. Maragheh is the case study for this research which is located in the north west of the country. The research applied analytical-comparative methods to identify and assess the pattern of physical and spatial growth of the city in different periods. The quantitative models included accumulation degree (Moran and Grey), Entropy, Ginny coefficient, Heldern and density. The results show that the city has experienced a slow and compact physical and spatial growth in the past through which the start of rapid urbanization during 1355 to 1365 expanded rapidly. The area of city increased 16.5 times and this was in the form of sprawl and continued to 1385. Regarding the results of the research the compact city pattern is recommended for the change of growth pattern and approaching the urban sustainable development.

Rural tourism is one of the growing sectors in tourism industry thatcan play an important role in creating jobs, revitalizing rural life andpreserving various historical heritages of rural areas, and ultimatelyshaping an integrated and sustainable development. This paper aims toinvestigate the different socio-economic and environmental impact oftourism on the village of Qouri Qaleh in the province of Kermanshah.This place attracts thousands of tourists annually due to its uniquenatural and historical heritages. The research is based on descriptive –analytical methods. A field work was conducted to collect the requireddata with the help of 150 questionnaires which were distributedamong residents of the village, using random sampling. Data wereanalyzed via SPSS. Results revealed a positive opinion of the ruralresidents about the economic impacts of tourism such as employmentopportunities and increase in people’s income. However, tourismdevelopment has led to land speculation and a rapid land-use changeat the cost of agricultural decline. Also, degradation of environmentby water pollution and overuse of rural natural resources, have creatednew challenges for tourism development in this village. From socialpoint of view there has been a considerable decline in rural urbanmigration, increase in people’s knowledge and improvement of ruralhousing. At the end, the paper presents some recommendations fortourism management and balanced development with respect to thecarrying capacity of the area.