The Factors Affecting the Location o f Medical Centers in Tehran City Case Study: District 1 of Tehran Municipality

The historical growth of cities due to the rapid increase of population led to the increased land price in cities and caused problems to the appropriate distribution system as well as the allocation of suitable spaces to some fundamental services like medical centers. Supplying health for all people in every society is one of the basic human rights which should be regarded by governments. The imbalance in fundamental services such as medical care and its imbalanced distribution system cause major challenges expressing themselves in different economic and skeletal dimensions. In this study which aimed at determining the factors affecting the location of medical centers, first the main variables and indicators affecting the location of such centers were extracted and then ranked using the hierarchical questionnaire by some relevant experts. After ranking the obtained indicators using the hierarchical method to examine the medical centers at district 1 of Tehran and investigating the balance and proportion of medical centers, the location of medical centers in district 1 were examined using the geographical information system by hierarchical model. The obtained results indicated that the northeast and east areas of district 1 in Tehran had faced major challenges in terms of the access to medical centers and a specified area in the geographical information system indicated this challenge in the north and northeast areas. The selected point by geographical information system were the areas in this district.