On Social Bordering of Urban Spaces in Mashhad: Classifying the Districts based on the Resident's Social Status

The main purpose of this article is to present a clear picture of social bordering of urban space in Mashhad and to identify the socio-spatial hierarchy in this city. 17510 resident householders were selected through stratified sampling and they were interviewed. The hierarchical clustering analysis was used to analyze the data, based on three social basic characteristics including occupational prestige, education and income. The results indicated that firstly, among the different compositions of the districts clustering the five clustering is the fitted composition. Namely in this clustering the five clusters have the most inter-group social homogeneity and the most between-group social heterogeneity. Secondly, comparing the means of the variables among the five clusters of districts indicated that they have a different availability level with respect to occupational, educational and income advantages and they have the socio-spatial hierarchical order. Moreover, the results of discriminant analysis of five clusters showed the discriminating power of education, income and occupational prestige as: 79.9, 56.9, 52.0 in percentage respectively.