Urban Competitiveness and Tehran's Status Among the Metropolises of Iran

By 1404, Tehran will be a knowledge-based, smart, and global city. Having the proper infrastructure and consequently a metropolis with national and global functions with a modern economy are its other features. The global experience of metropolises management shows that optimal urban management requires comprehensive attention to the citychr('39')s economic, social, and environmental structures, and this has been measured in recent decades, globally, by the urban competitiveness index. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the urban competitiveness and Tehran’s status among the metropolises of Iran. Instruments and

The present study is an applied and survey research that was conducted in 2011. Eleven variables were selected as economic indices of urban competitiveness such as unemployment rate, economic participation rate, etc., by the library method and from three official sources of the country: statistical yearbooks of the provinces, results of census of industrial workshops with 10 employees and more, published by the Statistical Center of Iran and statistics of Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare. Standardized score and numerical taxonomy were used.

Tehran metropolis ranked first in terms of urban competitiveness index and economic aspect. Tehran was the first metropolis of Iran with a score of 3.13 in terms of the urban competitiveness index in standardized score method and 0.72 in numerical taxonomy.

Although Tehran does not have a good status in terms of the urban competitiveness index compared to other metropolises in the world, it ranked first in this index among Iranian metropolises.