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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.

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.

The ever increasing urban population growth has created many implications in land use planning in the most of developing countries. Traditional methods of spatial planning are still useful, but they need to be upgraded according to new methodological, technological possibilities and full complexity of spatial planning. The factors which influence the urban structure and its socio-economic life are countless, and so to deal with a huge set of data, Geographic information system (GIS) techniques can help to organize and control the impact of different problems. Urban utilities are the vital elements to provide comfort and amenity for the residents. Clearly in many cases the inappropriate sitting of urban infrastructures has decreased the efficiency and sustainability of the cities. Today GIS as powerful processing means can provide different alternatives for land use planning. One of the most socio-religious urban land uses in Iran is cemetery. Traditionally cemeteries are located in the vicinity of a holy shrine or specified by the local authorities. However, these sites are suitable by the view of people and religious groups but they impose many physical problems such as poor health conditions or accessibility due to the rapid expansion of the city by the population increase. This paper attempts to select a right site for a new cemetery in town Sanandaj, as the old one now has no empty space. The paper applies GIS and Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques to find an appropriate area. The results show that the integrated GIS and AHP model has a high potential to compare different alternatives by investigating multi-criteria models and different factors which are involved in an urban utility site selection.