Analysis of the Conflict of Stakeholders’ Power and Interest in the Brown Fields Redevelopment Planning (Poshte Garajha’s Brown Fields Redevelopment)

Introduction :

Redevelopment of brownfields as one of the urban development and regeneration programs, often through a step-by-step process, tries to reintegrate empty, abandoned, or polluted lands that have been active before into the urban context. Since brownfield redevelopment is an important strategy for cities to achieve “sustainable development”, it is necessary to achieve environmental sustainability and pollution reduction, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. Redevelopment of brownfields is a complex process involving multiple stakeholders, which often creates various social problems resulting from conflicting interests among them. Accordingly, it is important to protect the right of each stakeholder to obtain sustainable and desirable results in the redevelopment process and set new rules of the game for them. In the redevelopment of brownfields in Poshte Garajha, the confrontation between different stakeholders due to their different expectations and interests has reduced social sustainability and the feasibility of the redevelopment project. This study has been compiled to analyze the conflicts in power and interest in the process of planning the redevelopment of brownfields in the Poshte Garajha neighborhood. 

This study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in nature. The combination of two methods of stakeholder analysis (Stakeholder Analysis (SA)) and social network analysis (Social Network Analysis (SNA)) has been applied to data analysis. This study includes four main steps: (1) Drawing the structure of stakeholders and preparing a list of stakeholders based on literature review and interviews. (2) Analysis of stakeholders based on the power-interest matrix and analysis of the power structure and motivation structure of stakeholders based on the opinions of experts. At the end of this step, key stakeholders have been extracted. (3) social network analysis based on the focus group among experts and specialists and drawing the relationship between stakeholders in the Atlas software (4) Verification of relationships and causes of conflict in the power-interest structure of key stakeholders based on interviews and focus groups in Gephi software. In the end, the results have been corrected and finalized with the views and opinions of the urban management (municipality) and big garage owners and workers in the area through six open interviews.

The final list of stakeholders of the redevelopment of Poshte Garajha’s brownfields shows that about 26% of the stakeholders are urban decision-makers and 26% are the users. The market, guilds, and local institutions each account for 20% of the stakeholders, and the remaining 8% are the army organizations. This frequency shows the main factors of the plan, namely people and urban management institutions, and related organizations. The output of the power-interest matrix of these stakeholders identifies six stakeholders including garage owners, imams of Sunni mosques, Poshte Garajha’s neighborhood facilitation office, central and region 3 Zahedan Municipality, and the Consulting Engineers as key stakeholders. The analysis of the power-interest structure of these key stakeholders shows that political power and then legal and social power are seen in the power structure, especially in decision-making and governing organizations. The analysis of the conflicts between the power structure in the Poshte Garajha’s redevelopment project in Zahedan indicates that the conflicts in this project are most valued, and then the economic and procedural conflicts are in the next ranks. Based on the analysis of the network of stakeholders of this project, garage owners, Sunni religious elders, and Zahedan municipality are the key and central stakeholders in the planning.

 All stakeholders hope to increase their participation in the redevelopment of the brownfield, but the existence of conflicts has made it difficult to achieve social sustainability and the goals of the redevelopment of brownfields. What is obvious is that there are conflicts between the interests of repairmen, wholesalers, residents, garage owners, and the municipality. However, what has been analyzed in the hidden layer of the power-interest structure states that the main elements of the power-interest structure of the stakeholders of the redevelopment of brownfields in Zahedan city can be garage owners, municipalities, and religious Sunnis elders because these stakeholders play a key role in resource appropriation, power exercise, and maximum exploitation. In the project of redevelopment of Poshte Garajha’s brownfields, social institutions influenced by ideology, along with owners and management institutions, guide the main pillars of the redevelopment of brownfields. These stakeholders should be invited to negotiate for the progress of the project and to achieve social sustainability and increase participation to realize the redevelopment of brownfields as the latent potential of the city. The use of “interest-based and power-based approaches” in the structures of “transactive planning” and “presenting an efficient model as a means for stakeholder conflict management in brownfields planning system” can be an effective step in the social sustainability of the sustainable development of brownfields.