Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences, 8(5) May 2014, Pages: 583-588 AENSI Journals Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences ISSN:1995-0772 EISSN: 1998-1090 Journal home page: www.aensiweb.com/anas/index.html Determining the Development Level of Shirvan County in North Khorasan Ramezanali Naderi Mayvan Assistant professor and Faculty Member, Kosar University of Bojnourd, Bojnourd, Iran. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: The development is a multidimensional process that requires fundamental changes in Received 1 April 2014 cultural and social structure on the one hand; and economic growth and reduction of Received in revised form 15 May poverty and inequality on the other hand. The intense focus and imbalance are features 2014 of the Third World and the results of polar growth policies. As a result of these policies, Accepted 31 May 2014 a limited number of regions have a key role and the other ones are marginalized. Available online 10 June 2014 Identifying and exploring the possibilities and abilities and consequently determining the development level of regions are challenges facing to urban planning. Determining Keywords: and trying to establish a reasonable balance in urban network system are effective the development level, Shirvan, the strategies for space organizing and facilitate the sustainable development process. development indexes, Numerical Hence, the general objective of this study is evaluation of the development level in Taxonomy Shirvan County across the North Korasanand to determine the development level of the county in terms of the development index using the latest statistics and information. To assess the development level of the counties in the North Khorasan and to determine the development level, it’s been used the Numerical Taxonomy Model with 30 variables in the form of cultural, health and institutional-framework. We use descriptive-analytical method in this study. Some results of the study indicate that there are facilities and services in Bojnord (capital of North Khorasan). © 2014 AENSI Publisher All rights reserved. To Cite This Article: Ramezanali Naderi Mayvan., Determining the Development Level of Shirvan County in North Khorasan. Adv. in Nat. Appl. Sci., 8(5): 583-588, 2014 INTRODUCTION The development is a process by which thecommunities through passing from more or less the same developmental stages, and qualitative and quantitative changes will become the developed countries (Nasiri, 2000, 108). The development guides the community to achieve its goals. The UN expresses that the development is a process which unity people and government’s efforts to improve social, economic, and cultural situation of each region, and include people’s living of these regions with a nation and enables them to participate in the development. Maybe it can be understood the concept of development by economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions. To experts, there are different interpretations of development term including production increase, efficiency increase, improving the quality of life and health services, solving people’s problems, unemployment and inflation, providing economic-social requirements and training and active participation in different fields (Todaro 1999, 23). Basically, the development is changing a civilization to another, or in the other words, it’s changing the old thought to the new community’s one. That’s why they consider the development as a death and as a birth; death of a thought and the proportionate system to the old one; the birth of a new thought and system (Azimi 1998, 13). The development is a process that typically means the evolution of an organism or a thing during potential capabilities or abilities (Zax 1998, 16). Unreasonable and inappropriate focus on the biological fields lead to inequality economic-social development of geographical areas; the issue that reflects on geographical landscape of cities and their uneven growth (Farid 1996, 433). In the last years, the application of quantitative method in urban and regional planning has increased (Hoseiin zade, Dalir 2001, 50). One of the different methods is grading the regions in terms of the development of numerical taxonomic method. It’s an appropriate method to determine the grading and to compare the different regions according to their development level. 30 indexes have been selected in the form of cultural, health, and institutional-framework indexes to identify how the development situation of counties in the North Khorasan and their grading. The development level of counties in the North Khorasan has been analyzed and compared by application of the classification method. Corresponding Author: Ramezanali Naderi Mayvan, Assistant professor and Faculty Member, Kosar University of Bojnourd, Bojnourd, Iran. E-mail: [email protected] 584 Ramezanali Naderi Mayvan, 2014 Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences, 8(5) May 2014, Pages: 583-588 R: prevents north Khorasan 1392 R: prevents north Khorasan 1392 Literature Review: It’s been done the researches in the case of determining the development level of regions and investigating the inequalities between them. Noorbakhsh (2002) did study as “Human Development and Regional Differences in India”. He’s investigated the inequalities among the states in India. Mansouri Sales (1996) and Habibi et al (1999) have graded Tehran’s counties and Qazvin province in terms of development level by this method and investigated the inequalities among them. Ahangari and Alvand (2005) determined the development level of counties in Lorestan Province in general, during 1994-2003 and graded these counties in terms of development. Dehghan investigated the development level of counties in Azerbaijan during 1976-1986. He believes that the development promotes in urban area more than rural areas and the development gap among the counties in this province is very high;So that the inequality among the counties in this province is more than the inequalities among the provinces in the country (Dehghan 1994, 166). Research Method: It’s an applied research and its method is descriptive-analytical. The geographical limit is North Khorasan and the population is 7 counties in the province. First this paper reviews the theoretical foundations related to the subject,and then it assesses the development of Shirvan County in the North Khorasan Province compared to the other counties’ development in the province. The data is collected by North Khorasan’s census of population and hosing in 2006 and statistical yearbook in 2009. Finally it’s been used the Numerical Taxonomy Model with 30 variables in the form of cultural, health and institutional-framework to determine the development level. Introduction of development indexes in the Study: What an advantage of an area to anotheris the benefit of proper living facilities in the area. In this regard, it’s been collected and applied the information related to 30 indexes according to census of population and housingin 2006 and statistical yearbook in 2009. Unfortunately due to the lack of sufficient information, some important indexes has been excludes. The applied indexes in the study are as follows: Institutional-framework indexes: Post office- Communication services office- The number of registered companies- Relief Foundation- cemetery-Urban taxi- Fire fighting-Bank- public bathroom- Gas station- Industrial workshop- Housing cooperation- Consumer cooperative company- Travel agency- Transportation company- Public toilet. Health indexes: The number of physician- Radiography- Rehabilitation center- Hospital- Health Clinic- Laboratory- pharmacy. Cultural indexes: Hotel- Printing house- Local press- Movie theater- Theater- Library- Park. Numerical Taxonomy Method: For the first time, this method was proposed by Adanson M. in 1763. It was proposed by polish mathematician Zy Gmunt Hellwing from high economic school in UNESCO in 1950, as a means to classify the development level among the different nations. This method is able to divide a set to a less or more 585 Ramezanali Naderi Mayvan, 2014 Advances in Natural and Applied Sciences, 8(5) May 2014, Pages: 583-588 homogeneous subset and proposes a scale applied in planning to identify economic, social, and cultural level (Feyz Pour 1997, 25). The basic question that is raised is how different regions can be graded according to different indexes? Hence, N regions (7 counties in North Khorasan) including N indexes for each one (30 indexes) are considered (it must be explained that after calculating to fine homogeneous counties, Bojnord County was placed in too high level (+d), hence this county was removed and 6 other counties were calculated). So it can be defined the vectors as follows. Each region (N regions) has been introduced according to indexes (N indexes). p1 X1, X 2 ,... X n p2 X1, X 2 ,... X n pm X1, X 2 ,... X n Each region is presented according to some indexes (N). According to this fact that all specification has different scales, it must be tried to eliminate the interference of different scales. So in the first step, it will be calculated the average of columns and then the standard deviation of each column (table 1). Since each member of matrix implies ondifferent scales which has no the same units, it should be eliminated the different scales of index. In this step, the measurement is attempted to unification and to remove the effect of different scales by forming the standardization matrix. The number corresponded to each index is deducted from the total average