Collective Action, Development of Local Community and their Role in Reducing Urban Poverty Case Study: Nemat Abad, Tehran

Simultaneously with changing the definition and interpretation of poverty، the policies and anti-poverty programs have been changed and altered their attention from classical theories of economic growth to focus on the involvement of local communities in the planning process، implementation and combat with poverty. Unfortunately such process has received less attention in the programs for combating the urban poverty in the country. firstly this article has tried to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between local community- based planning and poverty reduction efforts. In this regard، the concepts of collective action، social capital، and neighborhood as a location for community planning have been used. The research variables have been also extracted from this three areas that represents the capacity of local community development in dealing with poverty. Descriptive methods (documentary) were used in this research to obtain the theoretical literature، surveying، questionnaires and deep interviews in the two districts of Zanjaiha and Meyaneha of Nemat abad located at the south part of Iran (which is called poor areas). The results show that six factors including fear of more benefit of others in teamwork، spending time on the activities of the local environment، the tendency to aggregate، and the economic activities of women، fear of less participation of others in teamwork and finally connection with the state organizations about the issues of community are the most important and distinguished factors of two neighborhoods in social development. Also، though the underlying variables such as age، education، ethnicity، and language among two community are not different، but Meyaneha have a better social capacity for collective action which this collective action leads to economical change and exit from poverty and brings a proper economic prosperity for this district in comparing with neighboring districts. Generally، it can be concluded that، this approach with respect to its basic features including empowerment and enabling the local poor people، leading the decision makings to the lowest geographical level and relying on social learning can be a suitable strategy for combating the urban poverty and even other fields.