Who Cares About #citydevelopment: Determinants of City Development

Indexes simplify and communicate complex information and their primary purpose is to guide an evaluation process by helping policy-makers act and then assess, measure and monitor policy creation. This paper discusses the principles that determine firstly role of cities, we see how development spreads or distributes within the country. We observe how these principles impact the selection of location and how we can predict the future of developing cities. We describe which indicators are important for several reasons: the debate about what should be an indicator triggers discussion as to what is important to a city, it gives the city a goal and action plan by making explicit which target it wants to reach and so creates aspirations, it provides an opportunity to assess strengths and weaknesses and how these might be addressed. Finally, based on the principles discussed, we used Principal Components Analysis to calculate the City Development Index for Armenian cities.