The development of urbanization and urbanism in Iran has created a wide socioeconomic gap in urban areas. Rapid population growth along with the lack of socioeconomic growth programs and urban development strategies have deteriorated unemployment, inflation, housing price, traffic congestion, and marginalization in cities, particularly in metropolises of Iran. This paper, using a descriptive-analytic research method and a meta-analysis technique, addresses the urbanization and urbanism changes in Iran. Using GIS technique and CV formula, the spatial distribution of urbanization and its rapid growth in Iran are depicted. The research data was derived from a systematic review of documents and techniques over 40 years. The results of the study demonstrated that Iranian cities have undergone an unsustainable growth trend and urbanization has overtaken urbanism. Over the past 4 decades, cities have been struggling with rapid growth and development. In this regard, development-oriented governments can play a significant role in tackling growth and urbanization problems. These problems are especially evident in the socio-economic, urban planning and urban ecology. The rapid growth of urbanization (74% in 2016) has resulted in the emergence of metropolitan areas in an unstable process. Also, in metropolitan areas of Iran, environmental and ecological threats, rural–urban migration and marginalization have posed serious national–regional and local challenges. The structural–functional reforms in Iran, along with skeletal–spatial and socio-economic changes in cities, have given rise to a new social class (low-income people), which is characterized with non-formal businesses and informal settlements in the outskirts of cities, especially metropolitan areas. This has prompted unsustainability in main indicators of urban development such as security, building density, environmental threats, and centralization, among other things. This analysis is based on indicators such as density and centralization, informal settlement, and urban security.
In the last one hundred years, Iran has been facing too many diffi culties with respect to its urban management as a result of changes in the government system. The governor or magistrate and the king's agent were in charge of the affairs in the city. The year 1907 is considered as an important transition point in Iran. In this year, some rules were introduced concerning management of the cities and establishment of the municipality. The rules of the municipality were amended four times until the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1978, and the mayor was elected not by the people but by the government representative to manage the affairs of the city. The Islamic Revolution in 1978 brought with it understanding of cooperation, especially in urban management, but it was not until 1998 that the right circumstances arose for citizens to take part and share in managing the affairs of the city. The election for the Islamic Council of the city was held in 1998, which was a new approach in cooperation and the urban management of Iran. This article discusses the process of managing the affairs of cities during the imperial and Islamic periods, in the last one hundred years, and analyzes the new model of council management in the Islamic system, touching upon the management of the religious metropolis in Mashhad (which is the second largest religious metropolis in the world and is visited by over 12 million pilgrims annually) as a model. The author will also deal with the method of improvement in urban management and council management and present some new recommendations in managing the metropolis in the 21st century.
This article aims to analyze informal economy and competitiveness after the 1979 Revolution in Iran with an emphasis on its eight metropolitan cities. The research method is descriptive-analytical, and data is collected from official resources and statistics. The analysis for data related to economic competitiveness was carried out using technique for order of reference by similarity to ideal solution, entropy, and numerical taxonomy. The results of this study suggest that state modernism has been effective in the growth of urbanization and the decline of urbanization, which has changed Iranians’ life patterns from rural to urban in the wake of the 1979 Revolution. There is also a direct relationship between rural–urban migration and informal economic growth in the process of urbanization and urbanization in Iran. The informal economy sector, which accounts for 31% of Iran’s economy, ranks 30th in the world. The survey of informal economy in Iranian metropolises shows that 35% of its metropolises’ GDP comes from the informal economy. The results illustrate the imbalanced employment situation in these metropolises. The highest rate of female and male employees was recorded in Mashhad (81.16 and 90.55) and the lowest in Ahvaz (64.38 and 77.00), respectively. The majority of industrial workers lived in Qom (35.61), and the lowest number of industrial workers was in Mashhad (14.09). Also, the highest number of service workers was in Shiraz (78.40) and the lowest in Qom (54.34). Most of the agricultural labor force lived in Ahwaz (2.74) with Tehran hosting the lowest number of agricultural workers (0.98).
The government in Iran, in the recent century, has played a crucial role in structural changes, particularly in cities. These changes have been made due to political division, land reforms, economical investment and performing urban development schemes in various geographical regions. After the Mashroota Revolution in 1907 and petroleum discovery in Iran, the government's political decisions and oil-centred economical development led to a change in national economy from dependency on agricultural and livestock production to oil incomes. The research results indicate that before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the government had created functional and structural changes in the urban network and hierarchy with a capitalistic and modernistic approach and the instrumental use of oil. The changes resulted in such outcomes as racial variation, rural to urban migration, urban-regional inequality, the increasing growth and development of cities and in general urban structure sustainability. Following the Islamic Republic of Iran, the government's political decisions with an Islamic-sociological approach and socio-economical programming have influenced urban growth and development sustainability and have brought about challenges such as the reduction in urban economical efficiency, decline in urban environment quality, life quality diminution, housing crisis, etc. This paper seeks to study critically, analytically and using documental studies the contribution the government and its political decisions had in the urban structural changes in Iran in the recent century. Moreover, using documental data, the authors have presented statistical tables and diagrams, the levels of analysis and socio-economical and political structure in general and the urban structure sustainability of Iran in particular.
The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the extent of regional differences in terms of human development and economic development indices. In this study, the level of national-regional development in the two provinces of Tehran and Sistan and Baluchestan is measured by the above two indices to highlight discrepancies in regional development in Iran. In this applied research, a descriptive-analytical method has been adopted. The research data were obtained from the official Census of 2011 as well as the last official Census in 2016. The economic index was measured by Izard model and the conclusions were informed by the human development index. The results manifest that the studied indices have been affected by geographical factors and micro/macro policies of the government in the four decades since the 1979 Revolution, contributing to the widening of regional development gap. The HDI was 0.720 in Tehran and 0.494 in Sistan and Baluchestan. Also, the per capita income index of Tehran and Sistan and Baluchestan were 0.497 and 269.0, respectively, which indicates a marked difference. As for the average years of study, the index of Tehran (0.780) was nearly two-fold higher than that of Sistan and Baluchestan (0.439). However, the life expectancy index exhibited a smaller difference than the overall average. The results of the research based on the Izard model also demonstrate that Tehran and Sistan and Baluchestan with an average of 126% and 172% in economic sectors are above the national average (112%), the only difference being that the development process in Sistan and Baluchestan is changing rapidly.
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