A Comparative Study of the Competitiveness of the Cities of East Azerbaijan Province

The concept of competitiveness was often formed in response to the question why some countries are richer than others. A question that was raised since the period of Adam Smith and is a concern of many governments until today. So that in recent years, the concept of competitiveness has become a common term in urban, regional and national economic analyzes and policies. Globalization and the economy based on information knowledge and removing the borders of countries have gradually reduced the geographical position of competition from national to regional scale, and since the 1990s, the concept of regional competitiveness has become a dominant issue in the public circles of developed countries and some developing countries. It was done so that countries can achieve a clear set of policies to strengthen regional development. In the meantime, East Azarbaijan province with 20 cities has high potential capacities and advantages in various fields, which has made it different from many other provinces in the country. And its competition with other provinces of the country. Therefore, one of the most important platforms for creating a competitive city is to pay attention to the common and current indicators in the field of competition. Because knowing the effective indicators in the competitiveness of different areas and the inequality between them is considered as the basis of work in planning, which causes inequality to be eliminated and the current situation to be transformed into the desired situation. In this regard, in order to measure the level of competition between regions, various indicators have been presented at the global level, and in this article, different indicators have been combined with each other, and due to the lack of access to many indicators, the proposed indicators have been replaced.

Since the 1990s, competitiveness has become an important theory in the public policy of developed countries and then one of the key issues in urban and regional planning theories. Various views have been presented about it. The first point of view is the doctrine of mercantilists, who believe that the most intuitive definition of competitiveness is the criterion of action and consider the economic competitiveness of countries in international contexts as possible in the way of companies, and their prosperity and recovery from existing crises depends on increasing the competitiveness of the national economy and establishing the trade balance is positive. The second point of view in this field is the Porter doctrine. Porter extended the concept of competitiveness, which was only discussed at the level of enterprises, in the mid-1990s, believing in the importance of the role of the external business environment in creating competitiveness to the territory level. The third point of view is the Paul Grossman. This point of view has been raised in the criticism of Porter's point of view, and the competitiveness which was mentioned in Porter's point of view as the meaning of increasing economic productivity in comparison with competitors for the economy of countries has been empirically unfounded and has called the comparison of place with the company as baseless.

The current research is descriptive and analytical in terms of application and nature. Library method was used to collect data and Prometheus multi-criteria decision-making method was used for data analysis.

In the current research, 39 indicators for 2006 and 45 variables for 2016 were used in 6 different dimensions in order to investigate the competitiveness of the cities of East Azarbaijan province. The used indices have been descaled after softening by the norm method, then to express the relative importance of the used variables, each of them has been weighted using Shannon's entropy method. The results of variable weighting show that in 2006, variables such as the number of literate people, the number of high school students, the number of middle school students, employment rate, teaching staff and the number of active landlines and for 2015, the total number of literate people , the number of electricity subscribers, the number of active fixed telephone lines, the number of high school students, the number of middle school students, the number of elementary school students, the number of pharmacies, the number of dentists, the number of library members, the number of veterinarians, and the number of state bank branches have the highest weight. To other variables have been obtained. In the following, after determining the weight of each of the desired variables, using the Prometheus method, the competitiveness level of the cities of the province has been leveled. Based on the results obtained from the Prometheus method for 2016, the cities of the province are placed in 5 levels from very high competitiveness to very low competitiveness. Of these, one city is in the highly competitive category, 4 cities with high competitiveness, 6 cities with low competitiveness, and 5 cities are in the level of cities with very low competitiveness. Also, the results of data analysis for 2016 show that one city is at a very high level, four cities are at a high level, seven cities are at an average level, six cities are at a low level of competitiveness and two cities are at a very low level of competitiveness.

By comparing the level of competitiveness of the cities of East Azarbaijan province in 2015 compared to 2005, it shows that the greatest improvement is related to the cities of Maragheh, Mianeh, Kalibar and Azarshahr, which is mainly due to the development of communication networks, the growth of mining and industrial activities and the expansion of tourism in the cities. It has been mentioned. On the other hand, Varzeghan, Shabestar and Osku cities have improved less than other cities, and because of this is different between cities. Also, in terms of competitiveness, the cities of the province have improved in 2015 compared to 2005, so that out of 5 cities that were in the category of cities with very low competitiveness in 2005, they have decreased to two cities in 2015 and more. The cities have had a positive movement.