Social participation in the central districts of Tehran: A study on NGOs and city councils

Public institutions are not the only agents who take part in the process of urban governance. Focusing on two other institutions namely NGOs and city councils, this research probes the issue of participation. Throughout the study, NGOs stands for civil society and city councils represents local government. In this regard, governance approach emphasises on the relations between local government, private sectors and civil society. It shows that informal groups, private actors and volunteers would participate in the urban management if there were any independent public sphere available. The aim of this research is to study the way in which people participate in the above mentioned process. To do so, we will concentrate on different districts of Tehran, namely 6, 7, 11, and 12 districts. we drew on qualitative research as the method and conducted 11 in-depth interviews with people from varied NGOs and 8 people from city councils of the above 4 districts.
The result shows that there is no significant constructive relation between NGOs and city councils, on the one hand, and between these two and the public institutions on the other hand. Neither is there any proper context for the NGOs and city councils with considerable expertise to participate in the urban affairs. One can also witness the decreasing sense of belonging to the neighborhood even within the traditional districts such as 11 and 12. The paper argues that part of this is due to the increasing rate of social problems and decaying social capital. Furthermore, the massive wave of immigration takes role in disappearing of this sense of belonging. This situation, in turn, tore apart the basis for citizen participation. Accordingly, it became clear that the participation was exhausted to writing letters to the officials. With the deep distrust to the officials, these letters most of the time do not help solving problems.