Using the SLEUTH urban growth model to simulate the impacts of future policy scenarios on urban land use in the Tehran metropolitan area in Iran

The SLEUTH model, based on the Cellular Automata (CA), can be applied to city development simulation in metropolitan areas. In this study the SLEUTH model was used to model the urban expansion and predict the future possible behavior of the urban growth in Tehran. The fundamental data were five Landsat TM and ETM images of 1988, 1992, 1998, 2001 and 2010. Three scenarios were designed to simulate the spatial pattern. The first scenario assumed historical urbanization mode would persist and the only limitations for development were height and slope. The second one was a compact scenario which makes the growth mostly internal and limited the expansion of suburban areas. The last scenario proposed a polycentric urban structure which let the little patches grow without any limitation and would not consider the areas beyond the specific buffer zone from the larger patches for development. Results showed that the urban growth rate was greater in the first scenario in comparison with the other two scenarios. Also it was shown that the third scenario was more suitable for Tehran since it could avoid undesirable effects such as congestion and pollution and was more in accordance with the conditions of Tehran city.