Development gap in Provinces of Iran

The need for sustainable development is to have regional justice in development. The imbalance in the regional justice will be an obstacle to sustainable development in long term. Understanding the development of regions is the first step to eliminate the regional disparities. In the present study two periods 1390 and 1375 has been chosen to assess the level of developments of provinces. According to the research literature and access to data and information, various educational and cultural, housing and infrastructural, demographic and sanitary indicators has been selected, due to the each indicator, the necessary adjustments has been made. To determine the degree of the developments of Iran’s provinces, two methods of taxonomy and TOPSIS has been used. The obtained results show that despite the reduction in the standard deviation and range of the provincial development index, there are some regional disparities in Iran yet and center-periphery test pattern is confirmed for both periods. Due to the Potential differences in different regions, applying the same program for all areas is not possible. Accordingly it is recommended that in the context of national development plans, regional plans with a focus on regional capacities must be done So that sustainable development be achieved for all areas.