Assessment of population and activity changes in residential centers of Tabriz Metropolitan region And the challenges ahead

Intruduction:

The emergence of metropolitan areas is one of the most important phenomena of 20th century. This phenomenon happened primarily as a result of concentration of wealth in the most important cities of the world and then decentralization of population and activities in bigger areas along with political, social, economic and industrial processes. Nowadays the metropolitan regions face different challenges including: population distribution and activities in the region, lack of territorial balance, the process of physical growth of cities, the distribution of facilities among residents and etc. All of these have created problems for the municipal management of the city.

The present study, with its brief view on regionalist thoughts, tries to analyze the process of growth and distribution of population in the metropolitan region of Tabriz. The method of present research has been descriptive (library) -analytical so as to answer the main question of the research : “ How has the interaction of population of Tabriz with surrounding urban points been ?” by collecting data based on documentary and library method and using approved plans and existing statistics and reports .

The present article tries to present solutions for improving the territorial planning and appropriate distribution of population in the metropolitan region of Tabriz. The results reveal that the rapid growth of urbanization in Tabriz has led to deep distance between population of this city and the surrounding cities.

In the past few decades in so far as the blueprint of distribution of population in the aforementioned region has been unplanned and it has not followed an appropriate order in proportion to the potentials and capacities and this has caused the management of Tabriz and the metropolitan region many problems. If this continues, this area will face even more problems.