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.

Introduction
Today, in order to achieve sustainable rural development as well as optimization of local advantages, identifying the factors affecting the utilization of geographical advantages are essential. The villages of the country today are more than ever influenced by the political, economic, social and cultural conditions of their systems as external factors influencing the development of rural settlements. These are factors such as inappropriate government policies at all levels of planning, legislation, management and implementation, bias towards urban areas and large industries, lack of independent civil society organizations, fostering the transformation of villages into cities and so on. Moreover, the internal obstacles of rural communities are such as: low level of awareness of rural stakeholders on their internal and socio-economic capacities, restrictive norms, low power of transformation, and low the power of risk, overcoming traditional approaches to harnessing the potential of rural areas, and the uncertainty and trust between rural communities towards new perspectives and patterns, etc. Both factors are the reasons for neglecting rural areas and lack of  proper operation of the capacity and potential in this area. Rural settlements in Khorramabad county have not seen much growth and are facing instability of rural settlements, despite their high potentials and capacities in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. In this regard, the present study seeks to answer the following question: What are the factors influencing the role of geographical advantages in achieving sustainable development of rural settlements?

 Methodology
The purpose of this study was to identify the factors affecting the role of geographical advantages in achieving sustainable development in rural settlements of Khorramabad. In this regard, it is a combination (quantitative-qualitative) research method with sequential strategy and exploratory - descriptive research design. Based on this orientation and evaluation, the Q model was selected for problem recognition and analysis. The statistical population of the study is the villages of Khorramabad. The qualitative participants were expert villagers who selected 30 theoretically saturated subjects and data were collected using semi-structured interviews and semi-structured interview card tools. In the quantitative section, we chose village experts. 150 villages out of 647 villages, were selected by simple stratified sampling. Next, one rural mayor or council was selected from each village. In the Q model, Q cards were used to collect data.

Discussion and conclusion
According to rural experts, the lack of role of geographical advantages in the feasibility of sustainable rural development in the study areas is influenced by the following factors: low level of skill and familiarity with modern knowledge, dominance of conservative mindset, lack of creativity and innovation, aging population, dominance of closed cultural beliefs, low income, inflation and uneven distribution of credit resources, market system instability, poor attention to infrastructure and welfare services, rural education and promotion system failure, weak legal-institutional arrangements, lack of system Integrated program for agricultural activities commensurate with domestic and foreign markets, service weakness Production support, low level of security and weakness of processing companies.
Rural experts' perceptions of the inability of geographical advantages to achieve sustainable rural development fall into five categories: economic factors, managerial-institutional factors, socio-cultural factors, human factors, and physical factors, which are economic factors with  25%, managerial-institutional factors with 23.66%, socio-cultural factors with 23.66%, human factors with 20.23% and physical factors with 8.70% had the most influence on the lack of role of geographical advantages in the feasibility of sustainable rural development.
According to the results, meticulous planning in organizing economic, social, political, organizational and managerial and cultural constructions, utilizing the geographical advantages of rural areas is one of the most important prerequisites for achieving sustainable rural development. As a result, planners need to identify and analyze the forces and relationships that make the most of these advantages by influencing shaping forces and processes, help improve the conditions in the geographic advantage process.