The Geographical Analysis of Urban Network of Ilam Province with Special Emphasis on the Role of Small Cities

Investigation regarding the analysis and assessment of urban system network of different levels including national or regional level, starts when the special arrangements of these cities on urban network level leaves organized hierarchical pattern and move to an unharmonious and imbalanced pattern. In the framework of this model, large cities of the networks will become bigger and through centralization of the services, capital and urban facilities the population will be harmful to the other network of urban centers (including intermediate cities, small cities and rurbans). This in return would lead to unbalanced spatial relationships at the network. The present study tries to analyze the urban network of Ilam Province with a special focus on the role of small cities. The research method is descriptive-analytic. Besides, in data analysis, the models of Lorenz curve, the rank-size rule and the balanced rank-size rule have been used. The research findings show that Ilam's urban network always faces the lack of inequality. Ilam city has appeared as the primate city of the area and there exists a huge gap between Ilam and next cities of the network. Small cities, depending on their ranks in the network level, have very low population and limited facilities. Moreover, the number of very small cities (rurbans) is increasing while their population is extremely low.