ANALYZING THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF KURDISH BORDER CITIES OF IRAN USING SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT INDICES (STUDY AREA: KURDISTAN PROVINCE)

Abstract

Access to welfare services and social, infrastructural, cultural, and educational facilities is one of the major indicators of development in any planning unit. Hence, the analysis and comparison of access to these facilities are considered as one of the most important factors in determining the degree of development in each society. In order to, the main goal of this research was analyzing the regional development of Kurdistan province using sustainable urban development indices. This research is an applied study with respect to its goal, and a descriptive-analytical study with respect to its nature. It was also predominantly carried out with a quantitative approach. The statistical population for this research included 10 cities of Kurdistan province that were ranked using six indices in the form of 61 criteria extracted from the 2016 statistical yearbook. Analyses were conducted using the VIKOR, TOPSIS, SAW, and Copeland techniques to integrate the results. The findings show that the cities of Kurdistan province are not in a good status in terms of the development indices, and there are large disparities in these cities in the economic, infrastructural, educational, health, cultural, and well-being dimensions, so that only the Sanandaj city was considered as a developed area. Also, four cities were semi-privileged (half-developed), while five cities were deprived of development.

Keywords

• Regional Development
• Urban Development
• Decision-making Techniques
• Kurdistan Province