THE LEVELING OF CITIES IN ILAM PROVINCE, IN TERMS OF DEVELOPMENT INDEXES, USING FACTOR AND CLUSTER ANALYSIS

Knowing and studying possibilities and abilities capacities and shortages, strong and weak points, together with assigning the level of developing for every part of cities, seems to be the first step in the process of programming and developing of such areas. There are various methods and techniques, by use of which we can study the degree of human development in cities and in general settlement leveling and degree of their involvement in development index. Among them however factor analysis techniques is the best one and of great use. This paper is going to analysis urban development index, in Ilam province in which 28 standardized variable examined and using advanced factor analysis technique, then it is presented as a form of compound 4 meaningful factor. In the next stage, the percentage of each factor, defined regarding to the human development. Finally by the use of these is cluster analysis method the cities of Ilam province are ranked into 3 groups. The results indicate that the cities of Ilam are different regarding the degree of development.