An Applied SWOT Model for Analyzing Role-Taking of Converted Villages to Towns in Urban Network

Abstract

One of the most important features of urbanization in IRAN, like other third world countries, has been converting rural points to new city centers. This effects on the number of cities and urban networks of the different regions. So it is necessary to provide new development plans for these new rurban settlements. However, as the usual, after converting them to cities, especially in macro regional plans, they are placed in the same group as service points for their rural jurisdictions. As a result, there is a need to introduce some methods and models for separating these small settlements to be able to offer different strategies for their development and role-taking in the region’s urban network.

For this purpose, using SWOT analysis, a research has been done in 12 converted former villages to city centers during 2001-2011 in East Azerbaijan, Iran. The results show that with regard to structural-functional features of each settlement, it would be possible to place them in different groups and offer different strategies for each group. The model can be easily applied to small towns and rural centersalmost in all and especially in the third world countries.