Identification of drivers and effective actors in transforming Isfahan into an Islamic global city

In order to become a world power, every country needs to dominate the economy and communication ways in order to expand its sphere of influence in the world through production and export. Iranian civilization in the pre-Islamic period and in the flourishing era of Islamic civilization was the superior power of the Middle East by dominating land and sea routes. In this period, the most important land transit route in the world until the 15th century was the Silk Road, which, due to the high volume of transportation, was the basis for the emergence and development of cities and connected the big cities of that time to each other and caused their globalization. you will The most important of these cities in this period were Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, Nishapur, Ray, Tabriz, Trabuzan and Baghdad, which with the decline of Eastern civilization and the rise of Western civilization, due to the position of Western countries and the differences between Islamic countries and the West, sea routes were developed. And the land routes and the cities on the way became less developed, so that today more than 80% of world trade is done through sea transportation and this type of transportation is based on The main is the global economy and of course, most of the global cities and the world's first level cities (Tokyo, London and New York) are located on the coast of the oceans. This trend shows that the flow of urban capital from the central regions of the continents has been directed to the peripheral regions of the continents, and this has strengthened the countries with a sea-based economy, and the large and old cities of the Middle East have suffered the most from this change in direction

The current research, with a future-research approach, identifies the most important factors affecting the transformation of Isfahan into an Islamic global city and identifies key players in this field. This research is practical in terms of purpose, and according to the components under investigation, the governing approach is descriptive-analytical. Environmental scanning and Delphi techniques have been used to identify variables and indicators, and structural analysis has been used in MicMac software and Mactor model for data analysis. In scenario-based studies, the expertise and knowledge of experts has been preferred over the general quantity. And the desired sample size should not be less than 25 people. In this research, in order to consciously select the participants, the purposeful sampling method has been used. The statistical population of this research is 50 expert experts in the field of urban issues, including municipal experts, doctoral students and university professors, cultural heritage and tourism experts, stock exchange experts, and engineers of Consulting Engineers. In this research, in order to maintain the validity of the questionnaire, all the items that measure the research variables (the same factors that are effective in transforming Isfahan into an Islamic global city) were used from the previous research items that were conducted under the supervision of experienced professors. Also, the opinions of professors and experts of this subject were also used during the interviews to compile the appropriate items for the research topic. Also, the reliability coefficient that enables the validity of the results of these questionnaires to generalize to the statistical community was obtained through Cronbach's alpha test and SPSS software, and the reliabilities of all of them were confirmed. In the last stage of this research, the key players have been identified through Mactor software

In this research, firstly, with a future research approach, the identification and analysis of the factors influencing the emergence of Isfahan city as a world-class city, then in the next stage, according to the key factors, the key players who play a role in realizing the policies of Isfahan's transformation to the The Islamic global city has been identified using the Mactor model and the level of competitiveness and competence of these actors has been investigated. For this purpose, in order to identify the factors influencing Isfahan city as a global-Islamic city, two techniques of environmental scanning and Delphi have been used. The results of this stage include 51 primary indicators. Based on the results of 16 main variables including GDP growth rate, urban market dynamics, variety of goods and competitiveness of goods prices, hosting of large international companies (top 500 global companies), urban population, number of direct international flights, number of large hotels, The number of foreign visitors, the diversity of energy production, the attraction capacity of tourist sites, being located on the main transportation routes, the government's low involvement in the market and market supervision, the establishment of international banks, the existence of international stock exchanges, the number of universities Superiority and the amount of foreign direct investment were obtained as the key drivers effective in transforming Isfahan into an Islamic city.

The purpose of this research is to identify the effective key drivers and rank the main institutions and organizations in upgrading the city of Isfahan to an Islamic global city. Therefore, among the 51 main variables, 16 main variables include the rate of growth of the GDP, the dynamics of the urban market, the variety of goods and the competitiveness of the prices of goods, the hosting of large international companies (top 500 global companies), the amount of urban population, the number of direct international flights. the number of large hotels, the number of foreign visitors, the diversity of energy production, the attraction capacity of tourist sites, being located on the main transportation routes, the government's low involvement in the market and carrying out market supervision, the establishment of international banks, the existence of stock exchanges international, the number of top universities and the amount of foreign direct investment were found as the key drivers effective in transforming Isfahan into an Islamic global city. Therefore, among the 6 main actors among the institutions of internal influence, the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development and the Ministry of Economy are the most contributors to the foundation and Chinese context of transforming Iran's cities into Islamic cities.