Rural settlements undergo various changes in the process of transforming into cities. Although this topic has been studied by researchers in various specialized fields, few studies have focused on categorizing and summarizing the dimensions of this subject. Therefore, this article examines relevant research to classify the types of processes, approaches, factors, and identified consequences resulting from this transformation. Using a systematic review method, the nature and impact of rural-to-urban transformation have been analyzed in 77 structurally and content-wise reviewed studies. Structural analysis results indicate that this topic has been of interest to researchers in various specialized fields from different countries over the past 20 years. Content analysis reveals five categories of information, including various theories related to the process of rural-to-urban transformation, factors and effects of this process, spatial organization scale in the transformation process, and types of criteria used in these studies. Based on this, theories related to the process of rural-to-urban transformation can be categorized into two categories: theories related to regional planning and theories related to the enhancement of spatial organizational management. The factors influencing the process of rural-to-urban transformation in the conducted research can be divided into three categories: natural, political, and planning factors. Regarding the identified consequences of rural-to-urban transformation, the effects identified in the studied research include six categories: sustainability, environment, physical structure, economy, society, and culture. In the conducted research, the studied levels of spatial organization were focused on three levels: micro, meso, and macro, and six criteria of population, settlement system, environmental, physical, economic, and socio-cultural factors were used in the analyses of the studied research. The results showed that despite the comprehensive changes in all dimensions of a village in the process of transforming it into a city, the studies conducted have paid less attention to the perceptual dimensions related to identity and sense of place resulting from these changes, and researchers need to pay more attention to this aspect.
