Analysis of Intraregional Disparities of Development in Mazandaran Ostan

Integrated regional development is an important issue in regional planning. The Ostans of Iran are in different levels of development in which interregional and intraregional inequality is obvious, and Mazandaran Ostan is a salient example for intraregional inequality. In spite of Iran s regional policy based on reducing the development gap between different regions and creating a relative balance in regional development, yet some regions suffer from lack of basic services and facilities. To adopt appropriate development actions for a region, planners should first evaluate sub-regions as regards existent level of development. The aim of this study is to analyze the Shahrestans of Mazandaran Ostan with respect to indicators of development. For this purpose, fifty indicators were chosen, submitted to factor analysis, of which five factors were extracted related to 33 indicators: infrastructural factor, industrial-agricultural factor, health factor, educational factor and communicative factor- which account for nearly 76% of the variance. Results showed that there are obvious differentiations among Shahrestans in development level; so, it is urgent to improve some indicators -especially in which inequity is critical- in low-level Shahrestans which are the Shahrestans of Galoogah and Jooybar in this study.