An Analysis of Rural Housing Inequalities in Counties of East Azerbaijan Province in year 2008

The aims of the present research is to rank, determine levels of development, and measure the area gap between districts and divergence using 37 qualitative and quantitative indicators related to the evaluation of rural housing in counties of East Azerbaijan province in year 2008. The current data have been extracted from a survey administered to find out about housing features in rural in the fall of 2008. The research method is "descriptive-analytical". First, by using factor analysis methods, human development index (HDI), TOPSIS, standard score, and numeric taxonomy, degree of development for each area has been calculated and rank of each area has been specified according to indicators. Then, by using of cluster analysis, rural areas of East Azerbaijan province have been divided into three groups of developed, developing, and less developed. The results in quantitative methods also reveal some differences in the hierarchy of development levels. For instance, the most developed rural area of counties of province in methods of factor analysis and HDI are Tabriz and Shabestar respectively. While the most deprived ones were Charoymag and Varzgan respectively. Variation is also present in the hierarchy of development levels in standard score, numeric taxonomy, and TOPSIS methods. Therefore, in order to find the optimum answer, mixed method and average of ranks in each method have been used. The results of mixed method for ranking and determining hierarchy of development levels in the province show that Tabriz is the most developed and Varzgan is the most deprived among rural areas of East Azerbaijan province. The results also show that most of the developed rural areas are located near the center of the province or influential areas like Tabriz or Marageh, which is a sign of core-periphery pattern in the development of villages.