A Comparative Analysis of the Process of People’s Participation in Urban Planning to Present Challenges and Obstacles of Modern Planning in Iran

Experience and studies conducted around the world show that in order to succeed in the process of management and development of today's cities with various problems and defects in physical, social, cultural and economic dimensions, it is necessary for citizens to have real and sustainable participation in urban affairs. The purpose of this paper is to provide a perceptual framework on the process of public participation in urban planning with a comparative approach to different countries to introduce the concept of real participation in order to achieve sustainable urban development. For this purpose, after presenting the concepts and models of participation and reviewing the case examples of participation in the world, the problems and obstacles of participation programs in Iran will be examined. The adopted research methodology is the review of the collection of information from selected books and other sources, being explored through descriptive and comparative-analytical methods. The results show that some developed countries in the world have been able to succeed in implementing real partnership projects and sustainable urban development by adopting policies and strategies such as education, transparency, trust in citizens, etc. But in contrast, in Iran this is with various problems such as; Mutual distrust between citizens and city managers, incompatibility of citizens' priorities with the proposed programs, inconsistency of executive institutions with each other, economic problems, lack of effective education, etc., which leads to the failure of executive plans and programs and also keeps them depended and relying on the center.