Balanced Establishment and Unbalanced Development: An Analysis on the West of Zagros Macro - region Urban System with an Emphasis on Instability and Inefficacity of Small Towns

The formation and development of small towns and big cities in the urban system of industrial countries are mainly in accordance with the steps of growth and industrial development having a balanced pattern. Unlike developed countries, the rapid growth of urbanization and lack of coordination with stages of industrial development have created new problems in urban systems of developing countries changing the focus of the huge number of urban population in one or two major cities of these countries. The main issue in the process of socio-economic development of Iran is the rapid urbanization as a result of the influx of migrants from the villages, the small and intermediate towns to the big cities leading to imbalance distribution of population and activities. As a matter of fact, there are three major challenges in the spatial distribution of urban population in Iran: The concentration of population in big cities, urban network changes and hierarchal urban pattern, as the urban galactic and homogeneity network of Iran have been discrete, changing to the chain network. It leads to some natural reflections namely urban dominance, the concentration of population and activity in big cities, balance disturbance of urban network and System and the emergence of The Prime Urban Pattern which is mainly based on the concentration of economic, social and demographic activities. Appearing in the west of Zagros macro-region, this model makes not only a turmoil in logical relations among small, middle and large cities, but also a disturbance and lack of spatial balance in urban-regional system.
Materials and Methodologies: Applying descriptive-analytical method, the present study aims at analyzing and reducing the urban-regional imbalances in the studied region based on small town development. The data were gathered based on the Population and Housing censuses Statistics, during a period from 1976- 2011 by applying the library method. Rank-size model, primacy and four-city indicators, GIS and Excel software were used to spatial analysis of the region.
The findings reveal that despite a balanced establishment of cities across the region, the population distribution and loading among the urban population and classes are facing a severe imbalances in the urban systems. In other words, according to the last census, although the rural-towns and towns make over 90 percent of the cities in the region, they include only 32 percent of the population which equals to the population of prime city of Kermanshah. The present rank-size city, especially in the base of the urban pyramid, is largely far from the ideal rank-size. Furthermore, periodic evaluation and long-term concentration, based on the primacy and four-town indicators, show the uptrend tend to more imbalances. Despite the emphasis of urban-regional development policies on the approach of small town in removing regional disparities, the process of urbanization in the region, in contrast with the aforesaid policies, makes more centralization and polarization. Besides, despite the 40-perscent contribution of small cities, they not only cannot improve the sustainability, the integrity and spatial balance after 35 years, but also face instability and inefficiency in the region. Spatial manifestation of these instabilities and inefficiencies can be recognized in the following cases: unsuccessful approaches to attract the population overflows of big cities on the one hand, and their rural regions on the other hand, unsuccessful approaches in redistribution and balanced spread of urban population through the region, unsuccessful approaches to reduce the prime urban problem, facing more than 14 percent decrease of the population and more than 33 percent decrease in the number of the shares of these cities in 2011 compared with 35 years ago in 1976, sensible long-term stagnation and static of these cities in the small town class making not only the region face the severe vacuuming in the intermediate cities, but also a few of small towns improve to intermediate class cities as the balancer cities, confronting of a number of small towns with the negative growth and depopulation and degradation to rural towns of region. As map 1 shows, these inefficiencies and instabilities have caused a severe inharmonious and polarized illustration of uploading and the distribution of urban population in the west of Zagros macro-region which represents a complete polarized place with high concentration and density of urban population in large cities of Kermanshah and Sanandaj in center of the region in the first level, the triangle of intermediate cites Saghez, Baneh and Marivan in the northwest and intermediate cities Islamabad and Ilam in the south of the region in the second level. These issues along with the lack of coordination and lack of the necessary linkage among various cities of urban systems lead to not only the heterogeneity and inefficiency of urban systems but also incomplete development of the system.
The west of Zagros macro-region is facing inequality and lack of unique spatial integrity. Although a considerable number of small towns are made as result of some approaches of regional development based on small towns to establish an integrated and balanced development, these cities could not fulfil their developmental and decentralizing roles due to both poor service, production and facility infrastructures and lack of investments; facing a lot of inefficiencies.