Functional Evaluation of Mazandaran Province Cities Using Factor Analysis, Numerical Taxonomy and Cluster Analysis

One priority of planning at the regional level is to recognize the system of residence and particularly its urban system. One of the features of urban system in each area or country is the way of population distribution between the cities of these areas which is called city distribution size. In the last decade the most important concern of planners and policy makers is, setting up the relationship between human beings, space and human activities in space, for proper and sustainable utilization of all human and spatial resources of an area in order to improve the physical and spiritual condition of society. In functional analysis of Mazandaran province 41 development indexes of educational, cultural, social, demographic, economic, health and agricultural fields were selected, then by using factor analysis through SPSS Software, these factors were decreased into 6 main indexes and finally consolidated indexes were extracted. Then, these six factors were used as the inputs of taxonomy analysis in Excel, and the scores of cities which were valued between 0 -1 were obtained. Finally, in order to classify Mazandaran province cities by using cluster analyses, SPSS and Taxonomy scores, all of the cities were classified into 6 levels. To present the results graphically, GIS software was used to present a map entitled «Map of Mazandaran province cities classification». Results indicate that Sari as the center of Mazandaran has located in level 1 and Amol, Babol and Qaemshahr as three most populous areas have also located in level 2. At the end of the article according to the physical plan of northern coastal region, related suggestions on setting optimal and well-balanced urban system have been proposed.