locational evaluation and analysis of rural industrial areas (case study: markazi province)

extended abstract introduction the widespread and great inequalities in income generation, commonwealth, job opportunities and developmental facilities between urban and rural areas, have leaded the rural population towards the decline and in some instances the rural exodus. additionally, the rural poverty and deprivation has also caused major urban crisis, due to the vast rural migration and consequently the suburbia phenomena. diversification of economical activities and opportunities is an essential requisite in comprehensiveness of rural planning and development programs. rural industrialization is one of the most important and dominant economical alternatives for employment and income generation opportunities in rural areas, beside the agriculture. this approach has also an important role in regional development planning by facilitating of the industrial decentralization procedures. the rationale of the rural industrialization is therefore the necessity to reduce the rural-urban economical imbalances and inequalities; avoid and mitigate the social costs of irregular urbanization or in the other word, urban sprawl phenomena; and provide appropriate and profitable employment opportunities for rural over plus labor forces. a considerable contribution of the rural industrialization projects success depends upon the optimum location and establishing of them in the selected capable locations based on the set of criteria. establishment of appropriate industries, in type, scale and location, in rural areas as the most feature of industrial decentralization, is an aspect of regional planning toward rural development. this study assesses the site selection of the operant and candidate rural industrial areas of the markazi province, which has the first order in both operant and candidate rural industrial sites among the iran provinces. there exist 9 operant industrial corporations located at rural areas (industrial rural areas) in the markazi province, the central province of iran, and 10 other sites are also candidate to establish such industrial rural areas. according to the existence of the most of the basic industries of the country in this province and also the high potentials for various agricultural and livestock productions circumstances, the present study strives to assess the appropriateness and optimality of the carried out proceedings as for rural industrialization in the region or not. methodology the study region is rural areas of markazi province in central iran with the capital of arak city. the region is situated between the north latitudes of 33? 23? to 35? 33? and east longitudes of 48? 56? to 51? 03?, covering an area of 29127 km2. geographically and from spatial equality point of view, taking the spatial and locational dimension of developmental programs into account is unavoidable and very important, as well as the economical and social dimensions, nowadays. 19 rural industrial areas located at the markazi province of central iran, as the industrial pole of iran, were investigated in this study in order to assess the existent situations and also the optimum planning in future. 11 sites of these industrial sites are operant and else 8 sites are also candidate to establish. several environmental and geographical factors and also many economical and social development indicators, as the influential factors in location and establishment of such areas, were measured and used for analysis. following the collection and processing of data for various economical, social and environmental variables, the prioritization of the locational appropriateness and optimality of 19 rural industrial areas of the province were ordered, using the entropy and topsis multi criteria decision making methods. the statistical multivariate cluster analysis was also used to determine and classify the homogenous areas in order to establishing of industrial areas. the prioritized clusters and also degrees of locational optimality of the 19 locations for establishment of rural industrial areas were determined. results and discussion in order to prioritize and identify which sites (rural districts) is appropriate to establish the industrial area, data was analyzed using topsis multi attribute decision making method. aimed to this, the criteria were firstly weighted using another multi attribute decision making method, entropy. results revealed that although the first orders belong to some of the operant sites, but some other of operant ones have also very low orders. it seems that some non-scientific considerations have influenced selection of these sites, whereas some of the candidate sites have the better situations and upper priorities. therefore, the rational continuance of the industrialization procedure in the province's rural areas entails some revision and verifications in deciding and policy making for both of the operant and candidate industrial rural areas at the future. in order to distinguish and classify the homogenous locations (operant and candidate sites), the hierarchical cluster analysis (ca) was also done on the set of indicators, based on the ward method using spss 16.0. two first clusters including 9 sites have been combined at a few later on the distance scale and so, the clustering procedure of rural areas has been finished with only these two major clusters, which classified the 19 rural districts of the 8 townships in two homogenous subsets. conclusion the contribution of rural industrialization in rural development policies is not only unavoidable, but the role of such procedures and operations is very crucial in success of the rural development and poverty alleviation projects, especially in developing countries. in addition to the type and scale, the locational or spatial situations is one of the most important and effective prerequisites for rural industries to meet the success. in fact, the location is a contexture of the all of environmental, economic and also social situations. hence, a quantitative locational analysis is required before any decision and operation for developmental projects, so that the appropriate decisions can play even the role equivalent to the resources. the spatial assessment presented in this study revealed that the location allocations are not so rational to industrialize the rural study areas. such locational inoptimality encounters the rural industrialization practices with some of difficulties, which decrease the success of the operations. therefore, activating the low ranked candidate sites instead of the high ranked operant sites and discontinuing their more complementary operations will be a more rational decision to promote the efficiency of the industrialization process of the rural study areas.