Regional Disparities in Iran

One of the main obstacles on the way of national development is the disturbed regional balance. Therefore, the first step in regional planning is identifying the position of areas relative to each other regarding the development and disparities causes. To assess regional development in territory level in this study, in addition to showing disparities, we have analyzed 60 cultural - social, industrial, economic-demographic, physical- infrastructure and remedial- sanitary indicators. As the result, we extracted factors and composition indicators using factor analysis and utilized them as inputs of taxonomy methods. Finally, cluster analysis was used for grouping provinces. The results showed that there was one developed province, four relativity developed provinces, seven medium-developed provinces, nineteen underdeveloped provinces and one deprived province in 20006 among the 30 provinces. Dominant pattern on spatial organization of the country follows "Core – periphery" pattern in regional development in a way that all of the underdeveloped and deprived provinces are located in the margin, border and mountain areas. These disparities reflect environmental factors, political economy, and weakness of spatial planning system, inattention to land integrated management and the lack of coordination of responsible organizations in spatial development.