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Cities are considered as facilitator of the creation of vulnerability conditions. Due to the social and economic status of different groups of people who are living in the dangerous part of city, their vulnerability would be different in various places. Social vulnerability is the product of social inequality. Hence, social vulnerability can explain why some communities are suffering from environmental hazards while others are not in this situation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the social vulnerability of cities over 10 thousand population in Khuzestan province. The VIKOR method was used for achieving to this purpose and the results were presented in the form of a spatial analysis map. The results showed that the cities of Ghaleh Tal (Q = 0.4437), Masjed Soleyman (Q = 0.4455), Mahshahr port (Q = 0.4493), Aghajari (Q = 0.4569), Imam Khomeini port (Q = 0.4766) and Shush (Q = 0.5091) had the highest level of social vulnerability. Also in terms of spatial position, most of the cities with very high vulnerability of Khuzestan province were located in the south of it and the cities of the center of this province had low and middle vulnerability. In the northern part, only the cities of Gotvand, Dezab and Shoosh had high and very high vulnerability.

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The Shapes of human settlements has been ever changing  under the effect of different factors in different historical periods. One of the most important changes that has been visible in Iran over the past decades is to turn rural settlements into cities. Different factors has been ever involved in this settlements deformation.
 Different geographic locations, and especially climates, have affected these factors and their degree of importance has been a function of different environmental and geographical conditions. the purpose of this research is to Identification and evaluation of various effective factors. In converting Rural into cities in different climates of Khuzestan province. In the same vein, we tried to identify the effective factors on rural located on three areas including plain, foothill and coastal area of Khuzestan province and have become the city over time and the extent of the role of each of these factors in each of these three areas to be evaluated. descriptive-analytic research method was used to achieve the research purpose, and a survey method was used to collect the required data. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software, Factor Analysis and drawing maps using ArcGIS Desktop 10.3 software. The results of the study showed that   Four other factors (economic, educational-cultural services, private services, social services) had different effects in different climatic areas expert   Infrastructure-institutional factor that has the greatest impact on the conversion of the rural to the city in all four climatic areas and their effectiveness also varied with respect to the factor burden of the indicators. The results can be used in testing the future of the province and its settlements