Analysis of development rate of socioeconomic structures of the East Azarbaijan Province

Lack of balance and equality in sustainable development rate of the cities laid across the East Azarbaijan Province is one of challenges imposed on the sound urban and regional management planning which is necessary to achieve a sustainable city and region. This study aims at analyzing the urban sustainable development in socioeconomic and health-culture structures of the East Azarbaijan Province in order to determine the various levels of sustainability. This practical research was conducted using descriptive-analytical method. The Topsis-AHP model was used to find entropy coefficient, dispersion coefficient and Arc Gis and SPSS software were used as well. Thirty indices were analyzed as our data. The most important findings of the study show that Tabriz City with 1378935 people owns 57.91% of the urban population of the East Azarbaijan province and enjoys a very high sustainable development rate in terms of the analyzed structures. Tabriz is followed by Maragheh, Mianeh, Marand and Sarab (9.75%) in terms of having urban population of the province. With 20.18% of the urban population rate, the third group of cities including Bonab, Ahar, Jolfa, Soufian and Mamaqan are ranked in the medium class of development. The remaining cities, which constitute 62% of cities and only 7.29% of the urban population of the province, are categorized in the low ranks of the development in terms of socioeconomic and health-culture structures. Likewise, our findings show that the measured correlation coefficient for the consolidated indices of socioeconomic and health-culture structures of cities of the East Azarbijan Province was 0.991 with the confidence level of 99%; thus these findings indicate higher development in more populous cities and lower development in thin cities. Therefore, it can be concluded that the center-periphery model is dominant in this province.