Expounding the Relation between Rapid Urbanization and Economic Ideology of the State in Political Management of National Space

One of the most important issues in the political management of national space in any country is distribution of population based on the settlement system dominant on the country (urban and rural) and the level of concentration and distribution of population in them. Urbanization is a rapid phenomenon during this half century and 55 percent of the world population lives in the cities. In 1960, urban population of the world shared 33.8 of the world population, which reached to 39.3, 46.7 and 56 percent in 1980, 2000 and 2020, respectively; and it is forecasted to reach to 62.5 percent in 2035. This means population changes along with increase in population rate which has resulted in urbanization rate. The most changes have occurred in Asian and African countries. The states’ strategy is urbanization of social life. The comparison of the changes among the countries shows huge differences. For example, in Iran urban population shared to 33.7, 49.7, 64, 75.9 percent of the total population in 1960, 1980, 2000 and 75.9, respectively. It is also forecasted to reach to more than 80 percent in 2035. Iran is one of the countries which has higher urbanization rate than the world average. In this article, beside historical trend of the growth in urban population of the world, the causes and contexts of the issue will be investigated. In fact, in this article the strategy of the states and in particular Iran in management system of the settlements will be investigated from view point of political geography and political management of the space with emphasis on development of urbanization. The other issue is understating the strategy of the states in development of small or big cities based on balanced or imbalanced distribution of the population in cities’ network. Based on the UN divisions, the urban population number is a criterion for classification. So, the strategy of the states in creation and development of urban areas with more than 300 thousand people will be investigated.

The research method is based on descriptive-analytics method and the data gathering procedure is based on library findings. Some of the data are urban population data in four period of times including 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2020 which is compared with each other. The data resource is the UN department of economic and social affairs. Excel software is used to calculate the growth rate, ranking and calculation of formula. Regarding the data volume, after classification, the results of the calculation are showed by map and table using descriptive statistics. After calculation of population changes in four periods of times and investigation of strategies of states in management of urban system, the causes of growth in urbanization are investigated using library findings. 180 independent countries are investigated in this article. 

Growth in urbanization is a process which would be investigated in a global context and in particular in the countries, because this phenomenon is resulted from social and economic evolutions of the states and also affects the states. The authors believe that what happened in developing countries were the results of political evolution than social and economic evolutions in order to urbanize the population to reach their governmental goals. The research with emphasis on Iran  considers the factors such as globalization, economic growth, education, concentration of facilities, ignoring rural and state policies as the most important factors in urbanization process and by proposing the theory of “government, centralized urbanization and survival”,  considers the role of government important due to factors such as ease in providing facilities, increase in government size, creation of core-periphery dependence, national security and survival, lack of planning in political management of national space, economic ideology of the governments in particular capitalist, and liberalist and neo-liberalist economic strategies. So, the governments have pivotal role in urbanization of system of political management of national space, but economic – social evolutions would not be ignored, but this factor is also affected by government strategies. Three strategies can be seen in the development of big and small cities of the countries: population distribution strategy and development of small cities; middle strategy (simultaneous development of metropolitans and small cities) and strategy of population concentration by establishment of metropolitans and low development of small cities.

Some strategies can be proposed from view point of political management of national space in relation with the strategy of settlement system of Iran geographic space, as follows: to control the rapid urbanization and to adapt this issue with local requirements and capacity of geographic space of the cities of the country; promotion of population and urbanized population in small cities and distribution of population of the country in small cities in all around the territory; promotion of urbanization culture and  attemptto promote life standards in small cities, in particular in low-facilitated regions, and emergency attention to rural area and attempt to protect the population who live in rural areas.