Analyis the role small towns in rural development through Network Analysis Methodology

The aim of this paper is to study the function of Neginshahr city, as a small town, in the development to its surrounding villages.The town of Neginshahr in Azadshahr (Golestan province) is amongst these zones, which have been transformed into an urban zone in 2005.Therefore, by choosing 6 functions in the form of 35 variabls and using network analysis method have studied and compared the current affairs in the understudied rural district in two intervals befor and after Neginshahr becomes a town. The data obtained from the analysis of the activities shows that during the first section considering the centralization of most services in Azadshahr, rural regions of the rural district Nezamabad had the most dependency to this city. But during the second section by centralizing these kinds of services in Neginshahr city, the dependency of the residential places in rural district to Azadshar has been decreased.But the density of other operations in comparison with the previous section has been improved to some extent and the reason is the establishment and dispersion of these services in rural regions of the rural district. Study the value of centralization (nearness) in the section before and after Neginshahr becomes a town indicates that in both section in the studied region, Neginshar village has had a more closeness to other residential places as central place has played a key role in giving services to rural regions surrounding it which has resulted in reducing the refers of these regions to the center of the city.