Analysis of Intraregional Disparities of Development in Mazandaran Ostan

Integrated reg ional development is an important issue in regional planning. The Ostans ofIran are in different levels of development in which interregional and intraregional inequality isobvious, and Mazandaran Ostan is a salient example for intraregional inequality. In sp ite ofIranʹs regional policy based on reducing the development gap between different regions andcreating a relative balance in regional development, yet some regions suffer from lack of basicservices and facilities . To adopt appropriate development actions for a region, planners shouldfirst evaluate sub-regions as regards existent level of development. The aim of this study is toanalyze the Shahrestans of Mazandaran Ostan with respect to indicators of development. For thispurpose, fifty indicators were chosen, submitted to factor analysis, of which five factors wereextracted related to 33 indicators: infrastructural factor, industrial-agricultural factor, healthfactor, educational factor and communicative factor- which account for nearly 76% of thevariance. Results showed that there are obvious differentiations among Shahrestans indevelopment level; so, it is urgent to improve some indicators -especially in which inequity iscritical- in low-level Shahrestans which arc the Shahrestans of Galoogah and Jooybar in thisstudy