Journal of Advanced Social Research Vol.4 No.5, May 2014, 01-24 1 Proposed Criteria for Selecting Cities of Urban System in Iraq, a Case Study of Salah al-Din Governorate Sabah Faihan Mahmud College of Administration and Economics, University of Tikrit, Iraq sabah.fehan@gmail.com, Sabah_feehan@tu.edu.iq Article Info Received:14.04.2014 Accepted:19.05.2014 Published online:01.05.2014 ISSN: 2231-8275 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. Keywords: Proposed criteria, urban system, selecting cities, Salah al-Din, Iraq. 1. Introduction Investments in developing countries were concentrated in one or two cities consequently; unbalanced urban systems were the resultant of such policies, so the urban system in these countries characterized with spatial duality. The process of spontaneous