Evaluating the sustainability of development in metropolises with the approach of designing a competitive environment at the regional and national levels(Case study: The Large Area of Tabriz Metropolis)

The growth of urbanization and the globalization of the network of cities has made economic competition for promoting competitiveness between cities, to become inevitable. When urban competitiveness is identified mainly with economic components, it leads to a limited understanding of urban competitiveness, which has negative consequences for policy-making because the rapid development of the urban economy is accompanied by increasing social and environmental problems in cities. In addition, given that globalization has provided a platform for the analysis of urban competitiveness, ignoring it will incomplete subsequent analyzes of urban competitiveness. Therefore, in this study, a sustainable development perspective that includes the economic, social and physical dimensions of urban competitiveness is considered. The purpose of this study is to compare the sustainable urban development indexes of four metropolises (Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan and Shiraz). Thirty-three different economic, social and physical indicators have been used to measure sustainability with the competitiveness approach. At first, the indicators were entered into the GIS and compared with each other in a basic information method. Then, using AHP model, each component was weighted and using Vikor model, four metropolises were ranked in terms of sustainable development. And at the end, MicMac software is used to extract the matrix of effective indicators on each other by direct and indirect methods of effective and key drivers such as: population growth rate in future, family dimension, number of immigrants, youth population, population density, the Increasing activity rate, the increasing literacy rate among men and women, the reducing unemployment rate and reducing unemployment rate among educated people, as well as the reducing percentage of emigrants were selected as factors and drivers for sustainable development. Findings show that Mashhad metropolis with an index of 0.00 in the first rank and Tabriz metropolis with an index of 0.989 in the fourth rank and Isfahan and Shiraz metropolis with an index of 0.133 and 0.989 are in the third and fourth ranks, respectively.