Tehran metropolis

Large cities and metropolitan areas in developing countries are growing rapidly. These areas grew by attracting all facilities, services and capital of the country. Tehran has been the major city and center for decision and policy making in various administrative, political, economic and socialaspects. This political focus has brought economic, social, educational focus that attracted a vast majority of students of Iran. Based on measures by TOPSIS technic, Tehran province has ranked 19th in terms of development Indicators; therefore, its status is not favorable. There are total of 91 universities or educational institute in Tehran province 75 of which are located in the city of Tehran. There are 527 thousand students currently studying in these institutions which itself indicates the focus on capital city, especially in the field of education. National programs should take decentralization policies from growth poles. Decentralization of higher education as an integrated development policy for Tehran province and the country can bring many fruitful results. Based on recent policy on decentralization, cities of FiroozKooh and Damavand are proposed for attracting students of Azad universities and Varامین is proposed for attracting Payam-e- Noor students of the province and Hashtgerd is proposed for accepting part of activities of governmental universities for undergraduate studies as appropriate locations for identical spatial distribution.

  Diversity of economic activities, agglomeration of educational centers, concentration on technological initiatives and information generation, possession of the most important cultural centers, and arrangement of the most significant artistic and cultural events in Tehran Metropolis have provided a large-scale potential for cultural and educational activities and a special condition for cultural tourism development; however, tourism development plans adopted by Tehran officials are slight proportional to its regional capacities and have thus proved unsuccessful to reach a perceptible and appropriate tourism development. The chief objective borne by this research is, accordingly, identification of the factors and indices impacting on Tehran’s cultural tourism development, which, with respect to sundry commonalities of this type of tourism and creative and cultural industries, focuses on these factors, as well. Indices have been extracted through literature reviews and their content analysis. Using Delphi questionnaire, afterwards, experts’ and urban planners’ opinions and comments were extracted in two stages. Results of the first stage of Delphi questionnaires graded indices in Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). Outcomes of the second stage were analyzed byMICMAC software to determine impacts and susceptibilities of the indices on each other. Results of the study show that the index Rules and Regulations is graded in the level 10 and the indices ‘ Suitable Institutional Partnership and Labor Division among Different Actors of Industry’, ‘Political and International Relations’, and ‘Existence of Cultural Tourism Attractions’ are graded in the level 9 aimed at development of Tehran Metropolis’s cultural tourism. In fact, indices of the levels 9 and 10 are fundamental ones to which more attention should be paid with regard to results of interpretive-structural analysis in development of Tehran cultural tourism.