Investigating the effectiveness and relationship of smart urban growth ‎indicators with the spatial and social development of cities (case example of Babol ‎city)‎

The horizontal expansion of the city is a challenge that has happened in most countries of the world in the last half century, several approaches have been proposed to deal with this challenge. One of the most important of them is the smart urban growth approach. This research is one of the applied researches that has been done with analytical method and quantitative approach. The purpose of this research is to analyze and evaluate the relevance and effectiveness of smart urban growth indicators in Babol city. The statistical population of the research includes experts and residents of Babol city. To analyze the data, Pearson's correlation models and quantitative methods, multiple linear regression and Kendall's correlation coefficient were used in SPSS software. Based on the results of the research, the connection and correlation of the general index of the functional elements of the city and its 12 evaluated indicators with the smart growth approach, at the confidence level of 99% and the error level of less than 0.001, were confirmed to be positive and directly significant. According to the evaluation results of the correlation test, the strongest relationship among the investigated indicators is the user mix index (0.681), followed by hierarchy (0.677), accessibility (0.672), compatibility (0.627), variety of users ( 0.621), visual appeal (0.611), favorable outlook (0.597) and compatibility (0.581) respectively with the smart growth approach. The results of the Kendall coordination coefficient with the Delphi method indicate the identification of 52 factors affecting the horizontal growth of Babylon during the two panels. The average data collected was 3.36 and 4.50, respectively. In addition, the standard deviation of the factors in the first round was 0.5074 and in the second round to 0.2037.