Re-Organizing of Iran's Yazd Province Urban Network Emphasizing on Development Rate

One of the most important aspects of regional developments is to recognize economical and spatial structures of the region. Universal experience has shown that ignoring attention to the role of small and medium cities simultaneously with increasing trend of urbanization will result in country polarization, over all-heading phenomenon, severe imbalance in residence order, inaccessibility of some cities to development trend, and creating gap between urban and rural regions. The purpose of this paper is to re-organize Yazd province urban network focusing on development rate. The approach to this study is descriptive-analytical and it re-organizes Yazd province urban network based on library information and the statistical data obtained from four censuses (1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006) using spatial analysis models. The result of the study shows that residence order of the province and its urban hierarchy has changed in the last decades apt to the line with social, economical, and political changes. Considering models used in the study, it can be said that Yazd province is the first in Urban Primacy dominant in urban hierarchy; moreover, spatial distribution is unequal in this province. The results achieved using entropy index shows that population distribution in Yazd province urban network and cities between 1976 to 2006 has moved towards imbalance making the process unequal. So that Yazd as the capital of province is the on the top and Nodoshan is the most deprived city in terms of the study indices.