Unequal urbanization growth in Iran

Shahla Kazemi-pour Sabet, Ministry of Science, Iran
Mohammad Mirzaie, University of Tehran

The urbanization trend in Iran during last decades has accelerated by high rate of rural-urban migration along with rapid socio-economic and political changes that formed unbalanced urban expansion in Iran. In 1956 the first census of Iran counted total population size as 19 million – 6 million (31%) distributed in 199 urban points. Since 1956 the proportion of urban population increased gradually. The proportion of urban population increased to 60% in 1996 living in 722 urban points. The most important point is unequal urbanization of Iran. More than One-Forth of urban population is settled in TMA. Using the secondary analysis of censuses and sampling statistics, this article evaluates population and rank distribution of cities of Iran in last two decades and discusses macro urbanization problem. The analysis indicates that Gini Coefficient reached to 0.74 in 1986 from 0.66 in 1956 indicating the increasing concentration of urban population in Metropolitan Areas.