INFLUENTIAL ELEMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF IRAN'S URBAN POPULATION

Abstract

Urbanization is the concept of increasing urban population and the number of cities in a region. The growing trend of urbanization in developing countries is one of the challenges of today's world due to the occurrence of problems and its negative consequences. This article analyses the spatial distribution of Iran's urban areas and the factors affecting it, examines the rate of change in the country's urban population over 6 decades, and finally predicts the change in the country's urban population until 2030. The main question of the research is how urbanization in Iran has changed over the last 6 decades (1956-2016) and what factors have influenced it. The results showed that urbanization in Iran, as in most developing countries, has grown rapidly in recent decades, with the country's urban population increasing more than tenfold over the past six decades. The reasons for the rapid growth of the urban population in Iran can be listed as follows: the massive migration of villagers to urban areas, the development of industries in big cities, land reforms, the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution, the Iraq-Iran war, the continuation of the centralization process, regional inequalities in the country, the tendency of Afghan immigrants to live in the city and the implementation of some inappropriate laws, such as the abolition of the population criteria for turning a village into a city, the high natural population growth rate in the cities due to the suspension of the family planning program.