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Location analysis could lead to reduction of costs of establishing and running economic activities. Sometimes, choosing an incorrect location could dramatically increase the costs. A suitable location for economic activities is one of the most important factors in having a good urban space for citizens, firms and municipalities. In cities, most of firms are service providers. Due to the existence of external economies of scale and reduction of costs, especially transportation costs, firms are usually located near together. Clustering similar firms can lead to decreasing costs, facilitating shopping for buyers and attracting potential buyers. This study tries to investigate the distribution of economic activities in Isfahan, as well as determining specialized and diversified zones of the city. It also analyses effective factors on locating different activities.  Thus, specialization and diversification of all 14 zones of Isfahan are measured and then a regression model is specified and estimated by GMM approach. Results show that number of banks has positive effect on location of different activities. Meanwhile, specialization and diversification, which are the result of the economies of scale in localized and urbanized agglomerations, are critical factors on choosing locations in the city.

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Due to the rapid modernization process, we can see the inefficiency and obsolescence of urban textures in Isfahan alike the most Iran’s cities. Hence, renovation development of old textures should be one of the main goals in modernization of Isfahan. Analyzing the widespread dimensions of housing and identifying the ranking ways of different attributes of residential units by consumers is the most important step for being successful in housing projects. Since housing attributes are the non-marketed goods, we need to use non-market evaluation method to evaluate them.  In this paper Choice Experiment Method (CEM) has been used to evaluate and determine the consumer willingness to pay for various housing attributes. For this purpose, one of the old textures of Isfahan was selected and a sample of households living in that area was randomly drawn with 120 observations. Data was collected using choice experiment questionnaires and analyzed using STATA and EXCEL softwares. The results show that choice of residential unit is a function of 7 attributes including land area, quality and type of materials used in residential units, neighborhood security, access to major city centers, exemption from charge payments for construction, the amount of loan paid for construction and price of residential unit. Based on the results, the most effective variable is the land area; and residents have a high willingness to pay for this attribute rather than the other attributes.