Classification of the Level of Urban Development in Chehar Mahal and Bakhtiari- Province Using Advanced Methods of Factor Analysis and Cluster Analysis

The study of urban development and recognizing the cities’ weaknesses and strengths, potentials and shortcomings provide a suitable basis for providing strategies and applying appropriate urban development plans, as well as establishing a balanced urban network system. The separate study of the development of each urban settlement on regional scale (province) is not possible due to the diversity of their characteristics and, if done, the results would not be desirable. Therefore, it is possible to categorize urban points according to their developmental level by accessing certain amount of information about urban development and then classifying these points in different ways. Various methods exist in this regard, such as taxonomic analysis (1), Guttman scalogram (2), factor analysis (3), cluster analysis (4), and so on.In this paper, 25 normalized urban development indexes are selected, and using factor analysis method which is one of the most complex and at the same time one of the best methods of classification, the considered indexes and their reduction were analyzed through several more meaningful factors. Then, based on the obtained results (factor scores) and using the cluster analysis method, the classification of the cities of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in terms of the level of development into homogeneous and similar groups has been carried out.