Using GIS for Analyzing the Effectiveness of Urban Growth Boundary in Karaj, Iran

Nowadays, physical development is essential in any integrated urban development program. The rapid expansion in the physical form of cities in an unplanned and uneven growth in line with the various causes of irregular migration is considered one of the significant problems in Iran's cities, resulting in urban sprawl. With its numerous economic and environmental impacts, sprawling urban areas forced urban experts to explore strategies to deal with this phenomenon. The primary purpose of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of urban growth boundaries in the Iranian metropolis of Karaj. This paper prepared the required data to explain the studied problem. The study was conducted using survey techniques, field operations, and GIS software to evaluate the measure of success and effectiveness of the urban growth boundary. Moreover, analyses and quantification of the spatial dimension of the urban expansion have been extracted using multi-classification techniques by Envi, ArcMap, and Snap software. On the other hand, the study collects multi-temporal and multi-sensor satellite data, Landsat ETM with L8. The quantification and mapping of urban growth enabled us to quantify and spatially characterize urban growth and create a model to make sustainable cities. As awhole, outputs from our investigations highlight that the currently available free of charge long-term satellite time series provides an excellent low-cost tool for several applications, including urban growth analysis.