Evaluating the Economic Competitiveness of Metropolises in Iran

Urban development and the globalization of the urban network have made economic competition for promoting competitive status among cities inevitable. Assessing the status and identifying the economic competitiveness factors in metropolises, along with revealing the strengths, needs and economic constraints, facilitate the future planning for the competitiveness of metropolises. The purpose of this paper was to compare the economic competitiveness positions of 15 metropolises in Iran. The data which were integrated and analyzed utilizing Numerical Taxonomy and TOPSIS methods were prepared for 14 economic indicators by documentary method. The findings were indicative of the uneven development of economic competitiveness indicators in the most metropolises and the obvious differences among the metroplitans network. In total, the spatial distribution model of the economic competitiveness of the macroeconomic network of the country continued to be affected by the rules of perimeter center. Tehran with the index of 0.504 was in the first position while Zahedan with the index of 0.248 was in the last position of economic competitiveness. However, with the homogeneity of the data in the Numerical Taxonomy model, displacement and incremental changes as wll as a significant reduction in the economic competitiveness of the metropolises appeared. This, in turn, lead to probing into the factors, such as the population size, which are under the influence of the economic competitiveness of metropolitan cities and the factors, such as the number of job opportunities, which affect the economic competitiveness of metropolitan cities. Thus, it seems that economic superiority of the metropolitan area, as is seen in the demographic and political areas, does not represent the dominant and rivalry economic city with a high competitiveness index. As a result, by increasing the economic capacity of metropolitan cities, particularly through the main influencial indicators, it is possible to promote the position of economic competitiveness of metropolises and also to use it for research purposes in the national and regional areas.