Economy

Rural regions have experienced varied changes and social and economic reconstruction during last three decades. There exists great tendency toward functional integration between villages and cities due to increase in mobility, improvement in communication information as well as rural services. This in turn, resulted in the expansion of urban function including construction mass housing units, production, services, recreations and tourism activities in these regions. These functional changes case conversion in the nature of rural areas based on agricultural production, into consumption-orientation center. This new entities are non-homogeneous. This situation is influenced by many factors including physical conditions such as geographic location, isolation, and characteristics, climatic and sometimes human differences responsible for rural economic and social variations. Taking into account these variations and nonhomogeneities in rural area, efficient and optimum development plans are nonexistence. Increase in urban-ruralization around Tehran metropolitan has led to major physical, economic, social and cultural consequences. Lack of identification of the major relevant roots and sources has led to expansion of these negative consequences to other identical places. This in turn, demands the identification of the responsible factors and its change processes and mechanisms. Thus, the identification, explanations, exploration of those laws and frame works pertaining to urban ruralization as a major topical-spatial phenomenon is highly recommended. The first step in this regard is the determination, definition and assessment of ruralization and more specifically urbanruralization. The study area is Roobat Karim located in the vicinity of Tehran metropolitan. It is followed by determination of degree of ruralization as well as majorresponsible relevant factors.

Taking into account the nature and the objective of the study, descriptive-analytical method was chosen. Based on theoretical foundation of the study, there exist different methods and indices regarding the identification and classification of ruralization. This study concentrates on two dimensions including village’s functions and population and its growth during 1976-2011. It is followed by application of PROMETHEE multi indices decision making method in order to determine village’s functional status through emphasis on agricultural activities. This study further demands hierarchical clustering technique for classification of the villages. Finally, Clack ruralization indices as well as field survey were applied for determination of the village type in this regard. Furthermore, with respect to those villages which urban ruralization occurred, qualitative method of base theory that is Grounded theory was applied in order to identify the responsible factors. At first step interview with rural key official persons and with those with long history of residency (31) was implemented in order to find the casual conditions pertaining to formation and expansion of urban ruralization phenomena. In the second step, taking into account the methodology of the base theory, open coding was done. Regarding this step those relevant raw data were both labeled and conceptualized. Following, the second and third steps sub-classes are divided into broad concepts and those were divided into nodal concepts.

This study concludes that based on application of base theory in 8 villages, many factors including life desirability comparing with place of birth and adjacent settlements, lack of special costs, inexpensive business, lack of cultural barriers, variation in job opportunities, existence of different rents, economic and political structures are among some of the influential factors regarding urban-ruralization phenomena. It is furtherargued that income and saving level, the nature of center-periphery theory, capital accumulation system, discrimination with respect to poverty issue, imbalanced distribution of power, wealth, income and access to job opportunities are other determinant factors as well. Incapacity with respect to attraction of external capitals for creation of job opportunities, shortage of complementary jobs to combat seasoned unemployment, lack of potential for absorbing educated and well equipped social capital, lack of technical and vocational training related to appropriate agricultural technology, shortages of ample suitable agricultural lands and lack of knowledge of environmental conservation are among other responsible variables in this regard. Moreover, lack of appropriate and efficient agricultural market systems as well as cooperation’s and ware houses, need for government and other institutions supports, incapability in formation of industrial clusters, lack of tendency regarding economic background good for villages, management, the formation of two different construction types, land price and its relevant speculation, property rent, lack of effective control upon rural physical development, economic household participation and lack of social responsibility and self-reliance and easy accessibility to Tehran metropolitan all are responsible regarding degree of ruralization of Roobat Karim.

Cooperative firms after government and private sectors are being considered as a third dimension of any economy. The numbers of this type of firms are increasing. This in turn has let to great revenues which would well justify their value and importance. Nowadays, there are many cooperative firms with different names but all have one goal in common, that is the achievement of development. Women cooperative firm in Turkey, municipality cooperative firm of European countries, specialized agricultural cooperative firms in China, rural cooperative firm as well as housing and service cooperative firms in Iran are among some of this type of firms. Iran has another type that is village cooperative firms. This type of firm established in 1387. Their major objective is to help village council institution regarding handling their executive affairs, development of the villages and rendering of better services to the rural settlers. There exist 733 of this type of firm in the country capable of providing services to the rural people. This study aims to assess the degree of rural settlers’ satisfaction regarding services rendered by Dashtesar (Amol) cooperative. It further tries to individually investigate the degree of rural settlers’ satisfaction regarding provision of physical and cultural services.

This study based on its objectives has applied nature. It demands descriptive as well as analytical method. Data gathering is composed of both documentary and field works including observation, interviews and filling out questionnaires. The selection of the targetvillages out of 31 villages was based on number of population, distance from the city as well as from the major road. As such 9 villages were selected using clustering stratified sampling technique. The composition of these 9 indicate 3 villages out of those with high, medium and low population located close to the city and major roads, 3 villages out of those with low, medium and high with medium distance from the city and major roads, and 3 villages out of those with high, medium and low population located far from the city and major roads. The statistical society composed of 135 rural households resides in Dashtesar which were chosen via simple random sampling method. The analysis of data demands application of Chi square test, and one way analysis of variation (ANOVA). 
Discussion and Conclusion:

According to chi square test regarding provision of physical services such as rendering services in the area of supervision on construction activities (to some extent) and issuing building licenses (little), those cooperative were able to satisfy the rural settlers. This is followed by environmental services rendered by these cooperatives including waste disposal and creation of sanitary field. However, regarding the provision of other environmental services, these cooperatives were not successful. With respect to provision of social – cultural rendered services they were fairly active in the area of renovating historical and religious places and to some extent holding cultural – religious ceremonies and sport events. However, these cooperatives were not successful in other cultural contexts. Results pertaining to T-test indicate that rural settlers were unsatisfied regarding the provision of environmental, social, cultural and physical dimensions. Based on one way analysis of variation, social and environmental services possess the least average. However, the physical dimension possesses the highest average. That means, these rural cooperatives through rendering physical services were able to satisfy the rural settlers. The results associated with F-test indicate the rural settlers are more satisfied with provision of physical services. This study suggests that settlers of Booran and Nezamabad possess more positive attitudes toward services rendered by these cooperatives as opposed to Ghalian Kola, Noabad, Shadmahal, Mzres, Zvark o Pashakla.