Determine Rural-Urban Centers: A Model for Sustainable Development in Rural Areas (Case Study: Khorram Abad County)

In recent decades, the development of small towns through the process of transforming rural areas into the city has been taken into account as one of the major policy planning in developing countries, including Iran. Since the development of this effective strategy in improving the quality of life in rural areas such as population distribution, facilities and funds, reducing migration to large cities, increasing the participation of villagers, and employment development in the rural areas. This study is to determine the village-urban centers in the city of Khorramabad by examining the villages with a population of 2,000 in the form of 71 separate indicators such as economic, social, physical, quality of housing, infrastructure and communication, health, management and agricultural. In this study, analytical- descriptive method is used in terms of taxonomy, Morris method, scattering coefficient, method of communication nodes and a total minimum distance. The findings show that the rate of development of these villages is different. The results indicate that the superiority of one village is in terms of facilities and services. The village Bahrami based on the both Morris and the number of communication nodes is placed in the first place as a center of urban rural. The findings based on the coefficient of dispersion index showed as imbalance among the rural literacy rate, the education index and the accessibility to Internet in the villages.