Analyzing the role of empowerment affected by the planning approach in sustainable socio-cultural development of rural settlements around Hamedan city (case study of villages in the central part)

Obviously, although empowerment is effective in changing the way of life of rural residents, but due to various reasons, the role of empowering rural residents has not been taken into consideration in the planning and policies of the country. The current research, in a survey way, deals with the impact of the type of planning in empowering the villagers and finally its effect in the sustainable socio-cultural development of the rural settlements. The statistical population of this research is a rural settlement with residents in the central part of Hamedan city. From all 107 inhabited villages of Hamedan city, 50 settlements were randomly selected. Selection of rural settlements using random composite sampling includes relative or stratified sampling. Cochran's sampling method was used to generalize the obtained information to the entire statistical population. The selected sample size is equal to 382 households randomly. Descriptive and inferential techniques were used to analyze the data. The obtained results show that the current planning approach has not been successful in promoting empowerment indicators in the socio-cultural development of rural settlements. Therefore, the present study suggests the participation and accompaniment of villagers in the process of rural development programs.