Proposed Criteria for Selecting Cities of Urban System in Iraq, a Case Study of Salah al-Din Governorate

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to put some criteria for selecting group of cities in Iraq to
formulate a rational urban system in it. The main challenge facing our urban system is the
spatial duality which means unbalanced urban system. Moreover urban system in Iraq is
suffering from many problems such as: urban concentration in one or two primate cities,
rapid urbanization growth, in addition to, lack of infrastructure networks in urban areas and
economic problems due to the failure of urban development policies. The choice of a city to
be one of the cities of an urban system is governed by many criteria, in other word; the
selected city is function of many factors like the population size, economic potentialities,
functional relationships, suitable location, and so these factors were the main criteria of
selecting cities for the Iraqi urban system. The findings of the research were three cities
selected from salah al-Din governorate to be poles of the Iraqi urban system after chosen
other cities from other governorates depending upon the same process and criteria.
Depending on the previous conclusions, some recommendations may be necessary to
enhance the advantages of these criteria in correcting the spatial duality represent with,
focusing on the economic aspects of the sizes of cities is deeply needed , great attention must
given to identify the three urban systems ( the national system , the regional system, and
local system), as well as develop long-term strategy of urbanization in Iraq, more
coordination between urban policy and other policies is needed , develop a new structure for
urban and regional planning at national ,regional ,and local level.