سمیرا دهقان نیری

Following the creation of economic, social and environmental issues in metropolises, strategies aimed to build new cities to decentralize, attract the overflow of crowed population and reduce its activity, in order to enhance the quality of life and to organize the population and activity in urban areas. In the present study, the role of spatial planning for new towns in the metropolitan suburbs of Mashhad or in other words, the role of these new towns on the space balance, creating the employment and self-sufficiency and to absorb some part of Mashhad’s population has been studied. In this regard, in addition to the library studies and comparisons of existing status with the predicted targets for studying new cities, two series of questions regarding the condition of every new town, as well as analysis network process (ANP) were used to assess their success and to rank them. Results showed that the infrastructure’s indicator plays the greatest role in the success or failure of these cities in achieving their goals, so if the government does not provide the platform and infrastructure, new towns policy does not help resolve the crisis of metropolitans. After infrastructure, employment, attraction of people and accessibility have almost equally important and are in secondary importance. Eventually, our results revealed that Gulbahar has been more successful than Binalud, According to the results of the present study, the coordinated and proper management at national and regional levels, especially in the Mashhad conurbation, creation of employment opportunities, improving the identify and the quality of new towns and provide appropriate services is necessary and essential to citizens.