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In recent years, some researchers have used the concept of "Borrowed size" as a justification for the efficiency of small and medium-sized cities in Poly-centric urban regions. They believe that smaller cities located near or within an integrated functional urban area can take advantage of the population, facilities, and amenities of larger cities while avoiding the agglomeration costs of larger cities such as traffic, high housing prices, and congestion. In this regard, the present article tries to use this concept, in addition to explaining the growth of the furniture industry in the city of Bahnamir, to open the way for its application in urban and regional policies. For this purpose, the applicability of this concept in Bahnamir was measured in four phases: first, specialization and concentration using locational coefficient and firm density, second, a geographical overlap of demand market by connectivity field index, third measurement polycentricity using Green indicator and entropy of daily travel flow data, and finally, the balance between agglomeration economies and diseconomies using Correspondence analysis. Findings show that the city has been able to access the market demand of larger and coastal cities, lower production costs due to cheap land prices, land ownership and cheaper labor, and increasing returns become into a specialized furniture market that achieves better performance than larger cities by increasing competition, lowering prices, diversity and competition. In this regard, it is suggested that this concept could be used as support to reconsider the development role of small and medium-sized cities.

In order to meet the development goals in the housing sector, recognizing housing features should serve as the basis for planning based on the needs, problems and opportunities. Understanding these features and attributes is possible only by defining and using an framework for definitions and standard concepts. Indicators are well-defined and efficient tools for understanding these features and analyzing the results based on them could be an appropriate reference for formulating strategies, policies and goals in plans and plans. Despite the studies to recognize rural housing that have been carried out in a number of Iranian provinces over the past two decades , they cannot form the basis of planning and designing housing alone, or present a clear picture of the situation in different regions. Furthermore, most of these studies have used simpler methods to evaluate rural housing. Accordingly, the present study attempts to review the literature on rural housing and extract the indices in four dimensions: physical, economic, social and environmental. The study uses the data of sampling of rural housing features in year 2013 by Housing Foundation of Islamic Revolution. For analyzing the data, the study adopts FANP model and cluster analysis, as well as a comprehensive assessment of rural housing in country’s provinces. The physical dimension of rural housing was studied at two scales: the scale of the residential unit and the village scale. Latter emphasizes the relationship between the housing functional space and the economic, social and environmental conditions of its inhabitants. From this point of view, the physical desirability based on empirical studies on the assessment of rural housing units was classified in four ways: first, the framework and physical structure of this body that constitutes the cornerstone of the body. Second, the spaces created as a result of this physical framework, and the third, the functional relationship of the residential unit with its surroundings and the fourth; the beauty of rural residential units. These four elements shape the theoretical basis for the study of the physical indices. Similar to the physical dimension, the indexes were also considered in two scales: the first level focuses on providing basic physical and psychological needs at the level of residential units, and the second level, the extent of the village's access to residential accommodation units of the service and infrastructure and welfare facilities. Economic indicators were selected based on five criteria of livelihood variety, livelihood resilience, affordability, market and investment, and productivity. Furthermore, after reviewing the literature related to the environmental dimension, two criteria of the environmental impacts of rural residential units on the ecosystem and the degree of adaptation of the rural residential unit to the environment and nature have been extracted. The findings show that each province, considering the specific conditions of the region (such as climatic, natural, cultural and lifestyle patterns, development plans and the like) could progress in some of these dimensions. For example, the provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran in the physical, Khorasan Razavi, and East Azarbaijan provinces in the economic dimension, Qom province, and the Yazd province in the environmental dimension are leading and without a centralized planning, promoting these patterns in other provinces of the country. In this way, some key indicators that fall under the authority of the Housing Foundation of the Islamic Revolution could be made possible for the provinces to have an impetus for the region and, possibly, the country. This suggests the need for a spatial, integrated, decentralized, and groundbreaking plan for rural housing. Keywords:

In recent years, there has been extensive literature on spatial structure of metropolitan areas and its economic consequences, with emphasis on concepts of poly-centricity and agglomeration economies. Defenders of polycentric regions claim that these areas can make a balance between advantages and disadvantages of agglomeration to create competitive advantages comparing with mono-centric regions, while avoiding excessive concentration and congestion of competitor region. However, there are few studies that have examined these approaches adaptively. Hence, this paper aims to make a comparative study of two metropolitan areas of Shiraz and central Mazandaran to investigate some of the claims about links between spatial structure optimization and advantages of accumulation. The Methodology of the research is based on descriptive and statistical analysis such as Ciccone-Hall and Herfindahl index. The results showed that the spatial structure of the region with emphasis on the concept of polycentric and distribution is scattered and polycentric pattern of central region of Mazandaran against centralized and mono-centric Shiraz metropolitan area. In this context, from the perspective of the consumer, the lack of a dominant urban culture and urban environment should be considered as an important factor in the failure to achieve urbanization advantages. This is an obstacle to achieving higher performance services and facilities, especially lowering private sector investment. However, the findings from the analysis defend relatively equal diversification of production in region of Central Mazandaran against Shiraz metropolitan area, and consider it as a big factor to create complementary links between urban centers in the region. Also, it seems a polycentric pattern without sharing their resources in order to provide more facilities and Infrastructures in regional level cannot be defined in achieving localization advantages as a close rival to mono-centric metropolitan area.

Cities are considered as the bed for innovation and a place for driving creative energy of human being and also play an effective role in human capital concentration and management. Creativity in two areas of industry and creative class need an appropriate and desirable background for flourishing. Hence most experts believe that polycentric-network structures due to their own specific spatial structure have more advantages and priority in attracting such industries and creative classes. So this article, by descriptive-analytical method examines the effective components and aspects in attracting creative industries in the metropolitan area of central Mazandarn which includes four main and large cities of the province as Sari, Ghaemshahr, Babol and Amol. In total, 14 indicators in five approaches of historical and cultural heritage, Agglomeration advantages, dependentdiversity , human capital and creative class have been tested .density of ccultural and historical heritage, company size, share of professionals out of total employment, Reverse Herfindahl index, population as the potential market size, dependentdiversity index,-Hal Sysuh index, entropy index, the accumulation of educated people, index, share of educated people from job applicants, the share of immigrants of other provinces form the indices of this study.the results showed that this metropolitan area lacks an efficient and desirable diversity and demand threshold; the reason of this can be attributed to the fragmented nature of the region and lack of a well-connected metropolitan structure. Also optimum concentration of economic activities of creative jobs has not been able to incorporate the relevant activities together to produce products with better quality. In contrast this area provides a suitable environment for attracting creative classes which some issues such as concentration of cultural and historical facilities of cities, cultural acceptance of other ethnic groups and high capacity for absorbing new technologies approves this matter.