Measuring and analyzing of regional competitiveness in functional urban regions of Mazandaran province by cluster analysis

In recent years, investigation of the cities and regions competitiveness and their ranking in the regional scale has become prevalence in the both academic literature and political plans. These studies always examine the regions on the basis of the existing sources (like human capital, financial capital, investments in research and development, and infrastructure) and/or the results of competitiveness process (population, occupation and income). The increase in the popularity of regional competitiveness regards to decision maker and experts understanding of the absolute competitive benefits - rather than relative benefits - as a motive for regional economic development.
However, the term “competitiveness” is needed to precisely define for its application in the ranking of regional competitiveness, while the experts’ disagreement over its meaning, made it as one of the most confusing issues. Hence, the current study, tries to present a clearer and a more comprehensive definition of this concept by employing the specialists’ viewpoint given the shortage of the domestic academic literature in the ground. To achieve this goal, it investigates the functional urban-regions of Mazandaran Province (Iran) and represents some suggestions on the basis of main factors and stimulus of competitiveness in the province’s functional urban-regions.
According to theoretical research, three conceptual models of regional competitiveness are described, and the benefits and drawbacks of an economic development strategy based on competitiveness are discussed. Three studies that benchmark competitiveness are described in detail. this article uses the same conceptual frame work as the pyramids presented by Gardiner (2003) and Ireland’s National Competitiveness Council (2007). The administrative input is the key characteristic of regional competitiveness pyramid, which is to purify the competitiveness process for development by local environment. The economic development strategies interact with regional economic structure and the quality of these interactions determines the outputs of competitiveness processes. The base of the pyramid is the major inputs for competitiveness in new economy recognized in the previous tests that are including innovative inputs, knowledge base workers, clerks’ employability and entrepreneurial working context. These competitiveness inputs might be affected by the economic development policies. The middle layer aims to influence the development environment at the aspects of structure and industrial heritage involving age of foundation/selling shares, measurement/competitiveness of work, industrial combination and industrial specialization. The competitiveness inputs are purified by the environment in order to generate regional competitiveness outputs which include income, jobs, living quality and sustainable development. Each section of figure 4 shows one element of competitiveness that is recognized in the studies about indicators of regional development.
As a research methodology, the article benefits the descriptive and analytical method considering the research nature and the problem type. It applies the documentation method for data gathering and cluster analysis for ranking and classification of the province’s functional urban-regions. To define the functional urban-regions the results of Mazandaran’s territorial planning document analysis were utilized (2009) besides the other data sources such as the document of the province occupation and investment development and the 2012 statistical yearbook of the Province of Mazandaran.
Indices are selected in three stages: 1. at first, theoretical indices are selected from the literature review. 2. Then, the resulted indices (of the first stage) are compared with and tailored to the conceptual framework to cover all of its elements (table 1). 3. Finally, the theoretical indices compared with available data in the province and its counties and some of them are altered due to the lack of data. In result, some equivalents are opted as the study’s final indicators.
Based on the data analysis, the province’s functional urban-regions are evaluated in three levels. As the cluster analysis shows, three most populated and central functional urban-regions including Sari, Amol and Babol are located in the first cluster respectively. It seems that the economic inheritance and structure account for these cities flourishing when the industrial role of Amol, the commercial importance of Babol and the political and administrative significance of Sari made complementary nexus between them in the region by which their positions are reinforcing in a mutual manner, that can be observed obviously in the professional labor market and innovation capacity.
The second cluster consists of the functional urban-regions located in the second class of province’s population centers including Qaemshahr, Tonekabon, Babolsar, Behshahr and Chalous. No specific pattern of spatial and geographic dispersal is identifiable among the above-mentioned hubs and it appears that locative and urbanization privileges of them in line with their socio-economic heritage are the most decisive factors in achieving this position.
The third cluster is the host of centers with lower producing power. Not only is their little size responsible for their restriction, but also the lower administrative capacity limits their benefits from the synergistic and network privilege by cooperating with each other. For instance, the mono-functional urban-regions which are unable to diversify the tourism related activities.
It seems that is the enhancement of spatial efficiency backing the economic development must be placed in the priorities of the province’s policy making and concerned as the most important issue considering the competitiveness nature. Therefore, specialization of the functional urban-regions -particularly in the second and third levels- and reinforcement of transportation structure could lead to functional and spatial integration in all over of the province. Consequently, it integrates the complementary connections and expands the geographical market of demands for each functional urban-region in an exclusive activity belongs to it. This process resolves the weakness of the smaller population centers in undertaking the roles and activities of the centers in the upper spatial level. Moreover, the spatial division of labor force and specialization in this level would improve the region’s industrial diversity and combination that in turn would be effective in employability of labor force, creating a more entrepreneurial environment and accessibility to professional workers and experts.