Designing a Model for Evaluating and Improving the Performance of Urban Plans

Through differentiation between urban plans and projects, this paper emphasizes that urban plans are less exposed to evaluation because of the lack of defined performance evaluation models and the difficulty of evaluating the performance of urban plans compared to urban projects. However, many of these plans are in dire need of rigorous study and evaluation. Accordingly, we have tried to provide a theoretical-methodical model for evaluating and improving the performance of urban plans, based on existing theoretical approaches and also results of research in this area. Our proposed model evaluates the performance of urban plans by measuring three main variables, i.e. effectiveness, justification and sustainability of results, each of which follows a different measurement and evaluation process. This model explores the origins and causes of success or failure of a plan in three areas, namely policy making, implementation, and participation, and the resulted management system is based on two key mechanisms: structure and approach. This model presents a six-step process in the field of research that methodically enables the researchers to estimate the performance of the urban plans; and by identifying the successes / failures causes, it can provide objective and practical suggestions for improving the performance of these plans. Hopefully the proposed model in this paper will provide the researchers with at least an initial guideline for evaluating and improving the performance of urban plans.