Analysis of Iran Metropolises in Terms of Possessing Indices of Creative City

Introduction Creativity has gained much attention in urban and regional studies. From urban creativity view, the main questions are “why some places (cities and regions) are more attractive for new and creative people and activities than other locations?” This is inspired by the theories such as the role of human capital in economic growth, the role of creative human capital in city and region economic development, the role of diversity and low entry barriers in economic productivity, the role of tolerance in attraction of new people and different lifestyles, and the role of territorial assets in attraction of creative classes and industries, theorists of this field emphasize on the unique role of urban creativity in cities and regions growth, especially economic growth. Because of benefiting from the features such as concentration, diversity, and dynamism, metropolises have a lot of potentials to foster creative human capital. Iranian metropolises due to the diversity of economic activity, the concentration of the majority of educational centers, and also the concentration of technology and information production possess the most important cultural centers. Thus, they can attract creative capital and provide needed grounds for the realization of a creative city. With the importance of the creative city in the economic, social and cultural development and renewal of urban space, the main objective of this study is to show the status of Iran’s metropolises in term of possessing the indices  of creative city in comparison with each other.     Methodology This study is a descriptive and analytical research. Also, this is an applied research regarding purpose. In this study, library-documentary is used to collect data and to analyze data we used the Excel, SPSS, XLSTAT, SUPER DECISION, as well as models such as F'ANP (a combination of factor analysis and analytic network process) and VIKOR. Also, we used Shannon-Wiener diversity index to find the religious and ethnic diversity in the metropolises.  Discussion and Results At this stage, after reviewing the relevant theoretical and empirical literature and development of the theoretical framework of the research, and extraction of creative city indices, the data were collected and was put in the hybrid model of F'ANP and Vikor to calculate creativity coefficient for each metropolis. In the first stage, 34 identified indices of the creative city were placed in the factor analysis model to find different aspects of the indices. In the factor analysis, only the first 4 factors had eigenvalues larger than one. These four factors can explain 85.619% of the variance of variables. In this analysis, the most important factor is factor number 1 that alone makes up 25.087% of the variance. Factors number two to four explain 23.692, 18.702 and 18.138% of the variance, respectively. In the last stage of factor analysis, the factors were distinguished. The first factor is creative class and territorial assets; the second factor is talent and diversity, the third factor R&D and openness, and the fourth factor technology. In the next step, ANP model was established. In ANP model, its stages were conducted and the weighted super-matrix was formed and the relative weight of indices was calculated. The results showed that among different creative city indices, creative class and territorial assets explain 25.087% of the variance and with a relative weight of 0.293 it was the most important factor. The talent and diversity explain 23.692% of the variance and with a relative weight of 0.277; R&D and openness explain 18.75% of the variance and with a relative weight of 0.219 and technology with explaining 18.13% of the variance and with a relative weight of 0.212 possessed the next ranks, in order. Also, among creative city indices, foreign immigrants, foreign-born residents, R&D centers, the share of R & D budget from total GDP and researchers working in the area of R&D are the most important indices, respectively. Furthermore, the results of F'ANP model were loaded in VIKOR model and the results showed that Iran's metropolises are different in terms of possessing creative city indices. Tehran with a creativity coefficient of (0.099) was in the first rank compared with other metropolises and Karaj (0.359), Qom (0.366), Isfahan (0.393), Mashhad (0.804), Shiraz (0.602), Tabriz (0.952) and Ahvaz (0.0957) possessed the next ranks. Conclusions In this study, with the purpose of the analyzing Iran’s metropolises in term of creative city indices, we extracted the indexes from literature and earlier researches and the data were collected. Analyzing the data showed that Iran’s metropolises in term of possessing creative city indices are heterogeneous in a way that Tehran with gaining the highest coefficient of creativity was in the first rank. This finding is consistent with Sevad Jani findings (2015). He believes Tehran metropolises with having attractive amenities and diverse environment leads to the attraction of creative people and class from across the country. In this study, we came to the conclusion that in metropolises of Iran among different creative city indices, creative class, tolerance and R&D are essential in the realization of the creative city concept. Also, the research findings indicate that realization of the idea of the creative city in Iran’s metropolises is relatively consistent with the Florida (2002) model of the creative city. Furthermore, the findings also showed that creative city is a relative concept and related to the scale of studies. While Tehran gained the first rank at a national level, comparison of these findings with similar studies such as research conducted by Zanganeh et al. (2016) shows that metropolis of Tehran is in the last rank in the context of creative city indices in comparison with other cities in the world. In other words, while on an international scale Tehran is facing with many serious problems in maintaining its creative class, it cannot be very successful in the attraction of international creative class. With these issues, we can conclude that Iran’s metropolises should first attempt to improve the creative urban environment to develop creative people and activity. In the next place, they should try to provide needed grounds for maintaining and attracting domestic creative classes and activity and absorption of foreign creative class.