Examining and analyzing of the structure of the urban hierarchy in Ardebil Province

National and regional urban systems are always evolving over the time. There are a two-way relations between them where imbalance in one of them impacts another. Given that the dispersion of settlement points in the field of territory and the lack of cohesion in the spatial structure of the country is one of the main features of Iranian urban system, the examination of urban hierarchy is thus very important in order to identify the links and differences in the whole regions of the country. This paper examines the structure of the urban hierarchy and its evolutionary trend in Ardebil Province. For this, we have used up-dated and existing data to measure and assess the structure of the urban hierarchy in the study area. The analysis indicates that imbalance in urban hierarchy of the region has been one of the outstanding characteristics of Ardebil urban system over the past thirty years. Some reasons of this assymetry can be summarized in the excessive injection of the facilities and resources to Ardebil without the existence of specific plan; especially this trend was intensified when it was selected as the centre of the Province. In addition, geographical position of the city in urban system and remoteness of other cities in the region have impacted this problem.