Analysis of Land-use suitability in the metropolitan County of Orumiyeh in line with spatial planning

Introduction Land-use planning has three subcategories: allocation, politics and economics. In general, allocation is the interaction between land proportion (supply) and the area required (demand), in current condition of the region. On the other hand, politics is the spatial planning. The economic aspect of land use is dedicated to the fact that in the system of supply and demand in order to establish activities aimed at spatial planning, relative power and positioning of applications should be reviewed to optimize operations and increase land rent with an emphasis on ecological conditions of spatial planning. Land-use suitability can be influenced by various attenuation and amplification factors. Attenuators includes: drying of Lake Uremia, incorrect use of surface water resources, illegal wells, low power and steep land cultivation, differentiation and fragmentation of land in suburban areas, converting agricultural land to orchards, developing agro-based industries such as sugar mills and water-intensive crops that causes land degradation and decrease of its utility. On the other hand, the development of North – South rail and road communication lines in the province, development of energy lines in various regions as well as the development of border markets, creation of rural-County, and the development of urban economic opportunities in different areas are making a good platform to increase rents and economic benefits of lands which can also increase the desirability of lands. Therefore, current economic and ecological conditions and policy development in the province has created a new platform for land-use changes. The aim of this study is to investigate the desirability of land for existing and future applications based on human and natural criteria to determine the quality of each user of the status quo in terms of natural ability, and its relative position based on its impact on land rent. Methodology This is a descriptive – analytical research using space approach. Huge land use in the area studied was found using images of SPOT satellites, in a controlled manner, through ENVI software. Then, 14 experts of natural resources, agriculture, economics, rural, urban and tourism geography have prioritized and categorized utility analysis criteria on a Likert format to be quite favorable (5), good (4), relatively favorable (3), unfavorable (2), completely unsatisfactory (1). Then, using GIS software, the utility of each user to each criterion was determined. Finally, land utility was determined using five criteria: distance from County, distance from communication lines, electricity, gas and land slope after determining weighted coefficients of each criteria by experts through overlapping the layers. Discussion and conclusion Optimum use of land is considered as one of the most important objectives included in spatial planning and land use. This is due to the fact that having sufficient knowledge of land situations can help us more than some of its infrastructure and natural criteria to determine the value of land and its potential for human settlement and his activities. Results from the study show that there is a favorable range of different land-use in the east of the studied area. Because, this region has a better situation than the west region mostly in regard to the development of some infrastructures such as power networks including electricity and gas and the establishment of municipal infrastructure. Also, it has a good situation to attract investment in agriculture and industrial activities. These results are greatly consistent with von Thünen theory. As, the metropolitan County of Orumiyeh has been located in this area and there is a high quality of industrial, agricultural and gardening applications. Another important factor is that because of the suitability of agricultural lands in this area, local people show great tendency to the fragmentation of lands and gardens and changing them into private recreational areas. It can cause either natural resources depletion (Land and water) in the production cycle or conversion of agricultural land to garden land which may lead to the increase of water consumption. In addition, results show that the communication network is more extensive in the west than in the east of the County, and there is a wide utility of applications to the ways in this region. According to the results, the ratio of quite favorable lands to the ways is almost about 36.29% of the total lands, while it is 21.99% for favorable lands. The conformation of land use to its slope indicates that about 41.4% of the total land use is dedicated to the lands with a land slope lower than 5% and 20.3% is also dedicated to the lands of the land slope of 5 to 10%. The utility of lands compared to the County and its electriCounty and gas network is not high enough. The overall results reveal the fact that, regarding these criteria, quite favorable lands are respectively making 5.16%, 3.8% and 7.7% of the total lands in the area. Also, the portion of favorable lands is 13.7, 3.9, and 8.3% of the entire lands. Results from this study can be even applied in spatial planning and the concentration of activities and human forces in this area.