Development Bridges: Providing Effective Approaches to Create Sustainable Development in Rural Areas

The sustainable development of rural areas is one of the main programs of governments, which has been receiving attention for a long time. Sustainable development in villages can bring a lot of benefits in different economic, social, political, etc. dimensions. The main goal of the current research is to identify and prioritize effective approaches in order to create sustainable development in rural areas. The current research method is mixed, which investigates the issue using a sequential exploratory approach. In the first phase, the qualitative method of the focus group was used, and the corresponding codes were extracted by using semi-structured interviews and forming three consecutive groups. Then, in the second phase, each of the themes and indicators was prioritized using the quantitative weighting assignment (WA) method. The participants of both phases were from the academic and executive fields, and the first phase, used the purposive sampling method; in the second phase, interviews and questionnaires were collected using the stratified sampling method. According to the research findings, 134 primary codes, 46 key codes, 20 integrative codes, and 4 overarching categories were extracted, which are the main components and indicators of sustainable development in rural areas, which are considered as development bridges. From the results of the present research, the importance of supporting entrepreneurship and rural empowerment projects; providing long-term and easily accessible banking facilities and services; Rural strategic planning and management; and Improving the mechanism and necessary fields for attracting capital in the rural environment pointed out that they can provide favorable conditions for the implementation of various plans and projects in order to create sustainable development in rural areas.

In recent years, rural areas have become important places with great potential to create significant synergies to achieve sustainable rural development. However, in achieving sustainable rural development, there are obstacles that must be scientifically and carefully investigated and implemented. In most developing countries, the Rural Development Degree (RDD) largely reflects the degree of socio-economic development and national modernization. According to the latest statistics announced by Iran Statistics Center, about 74 percent of the country's population lives in urban areas and less than 26 percent in rural areas. These official statistics show that despite the excessive migration to cities and the existence of numerous problems in the villages, nearly 30 percent of the country's population still lives in the villages, and paying attention to the sustainable development of these areas is one of the main needs of these areas.For a long time, rural areas have been considered the most important economic activity for centuries. For this reason, many countries are trying to create sustainable development in villages by adopting different strategies and programs. Rural development is a set of activities and actions of different actors - individuals, organizations, and groups - which together lead to progress in rural areas. Therefore, in this research, the main goal is to identify and prioritize effective solutions to create sustainable development in rural areas, which takes place in the context of development and related concepts.

The current research is applied in terms of purpose and of a mixed type. The approach used in it is a sequential exploratory approach that is carried out in two qualitative and quantitative phases. Thus, in the first phase, using the qualitative method of "focus group", through semi-structured interviews, the desired information is collected and categorized in the form of themes; Then in the second phase, that is, the quantitative phase; Using the quantitative Weighting Assignment (WA) Method, each of the themes have been approved or rejected by experts. Due to the limitations of access to some experts and the spread of the coronavirus, the online focus group method was used in this research, and the interviews were collected in the online environment of one of the social applications. Semi-structured interviews were collected between May 2021 and April 2022. The geographical area under study is the villages of Alborz province, and each of the experts has full knowledge about the characteristics of this province and most of its villages. Three main categories were involved in these groups. The first group includes 6 experts in the field of urban and rural management and planning; The second group consists of 5 experts in public administration and sustainable development, and the third group, which is a collective group, consists of 8 experts in geography, urban and rural planning, and village executives who have executive and academic experience in this field in each of the interviews, the raw data were extracted independently and the initial reflections were discussed and using the "three-axis coding framework" in accordance with the inductive approach (moving from part to whole), the process of coding and extracting themes began, and continued until the theoretical saturation stage.

In the first phase, themes and indicators were extracted using semi-structured interviews. The main topic of each interview was done with reference to rural development evaluation indicators. And each of the interviews of the first, second, and third categories were conducted and analyzed in line with these axes. The time of each interview was 1 to 2 hours, which was recorded and transcribed. The reason for using semi-structured interviews was that the researcher used a semi-structured interview guide with pre-planned instructions to ensure that the same main questions were asked for all groups. Also, the index items of rural development evaluation were given to the relevant experts before the start of the focus group meeting. Finally, 134 primary or raw codes, 46 key codes, 20 Integrative codes, and 4 overarching codes were extracted.After collecting the interviews; According to the three-axis coding framework, primary codes are extracted first, and then it is time to categorize the centralized codes and finally systematic coding. In the following, the themes (components) and indicators of creating sustainable development in rural areas are stated. It should be noted that the indicators are the result of systematic coding, And the components or themes are the result of the classification of systematic codes. Four main themes or components have been identified with 20 related indicators, which are the components and indicators of creating sustainable development in rural areas, according to the quantitative phase, all the components were approved by the experts.

Achieving the sustainable development of rural areas is not only a big challenge for the development of rural areas, but also the vision and goal of the future development of rural areas, especially for our country, Iran, where a large number of its population lives in villages. The above themes and indicators, each of which can play a role as bridges for sustainable rural development, suggest different approaches in this field. In relation to smart rural governance and grassroots people, which was raised as one of the main themes; In our country, it has been emphasized many times that the crisis is lurking in the villages and good governance should be the priority of the government. Sustainable rural development, while creating such economic and social structures that can generate income for residents, meet their diverse approaches and needs, and improve access to public goods and services, and at the same time, the negative effects of phenomena such as weak rural economy, unemployment, migration unreasonably reduce the cities and even old and new theories confirm these things. Sustainable rural development can be developed in different ways. According to the first theme, the smart village is one of the things that seems to be useful in the current conditions of the country.