Review the Potential and Capabilities of Citizen's Participation in Urban Affairs

From the second half of the twentieth century, partnership concept with a new approach has been changed to a key issue in developmental programs, especially in urban developmental programs.To strengthen and develop the participation of people in planning, recognition of the effective factors is essential. Participation in our country is not a new phenomenon, but due to urbanization growth, the need to revise the concept and presenting an appropriate model based on the needs of citizens seems necessary.Fasa, with 92,020 population in 2006 is one of the most populated cities of Fars province.The problems that the management of Fasa is confronted with regarding the lack of active participation of citizens can be referred as the lack of cooperation of citizens for payment of their municipality duties and lack of citizens’ awareness about their urban rights and duties. The main objective of the present study is to review the participation potentials and capabilities of Fasa citizens in municipal affairs.In this research, which is of applied and development type, for answering the questions and presenting appropriate solution for the considered issue, analytical –descriptive method has been used. For collecting data, two different methods of documentary and surveying have been used.In this research, firstly the relevant literature was studied. After recognizing different theories and patterns, in practical realization of partnership, two required and necessary prerequisites were diagnosed: 1) tendency and willingness to participation and 2) possibility of partnership, consequently, this paper focused on the level of tendency and willingness for participation(potential of citizens’ participation).Then for recognizing and identifying the necessary variables which show the potential of citizens’ participation in urban affairs, eight (8) main variables were recognized, and in total, 34 questions were indicated to measure these 8 variables. Accordingly, the evaluation questionnaire of citizen participation variables of Fasa was developed, executed and analyzed.The results of this study show that Fasa citizens has a partnership potential of moderate to upward and among the indices which show the citizens partnership, only in the indices of leisure time, social reliance and self imagination have a moderate rank and in the remaining ones have obtained more than average.