چكيده به لاتين
Abstract
Positive consequences of citizen participation in planning process are irrefutable. Over the last few years, most countries have been considering citizen participation in planning, as they attempt to provide the grounds for public participation at different levels of planning and decision making. While the concept of public participation has been developed in a piecemeal fashion in developed countries and while it is the line with their social, economic, political and cultural structure, its application to developing countries with numerous planning-related problems (e.g. poverty, rapid urban development, inefficiencies in service provision, infrastructure and institutional frailty, etc.) without due consideration to the characteristics of their planning environments, could not achieve much significant success. From a theoretical point of view, most of the research noticing to public participation in the urban planning environment of Iran, have adopted the positivist approach to evaluate the existing theories and have aimed to determine the Importance of known variables and their impacts on public participation. In the other part of these research have been tried to evaluate the consequences of participatory processes. These research attempt to deal with this complicated and abstract phenomenon through shrinking it to numbers and figures within the framework of existing theories, without considering the characteristics of planning environment. Accordingly, there is a contradicting understanding that is riddled with misunderstandings and ambiguity about the concept of participation and its effectiveness in the urban planning environment of Iran. From an empirical point of view, due to the essence of this phenomenon and the variety of its understanding and practice in different structures, the contemporary experiments that are based on the theories, models and experiences of other countries, over-reliance on the techniques of participation and merely emphasized on objective conditions of the formal structure of planning environment, not only have not decreased the gap between theory and practice, but also have resulted in practice in trapping participation into a vicious and faulty cycle. The results of these attempts in theory and practice, reveal the necessity of a basic theory which accounts for the characteristics of the planning environment, while considering the formal and informal structures simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to put forward a basic theory to understand the position of people and planners in the participation process within the urban planning environment of Iran. This research can be categorized within interpretive paradigm. Epistemologically it emphasizes on the interaction between the researcher and the case study and the closest possible objective distance. Considering the essence of the phenomenon of the study, this research uses grounded theory methodology. Data gathering has been done using in-depth unstructured interviews. Choosing the participants (interviewees) have been targeted towards developing the concepts and continued until theoretical saturation. 22 individual in-depth interviews and 2 group interviews have been conducted with planners and people who had experience in participation. Being aware of the interactive characteristic of the concept of participation, during the procedure of the study in order to develop the concepts further, some field surveys have been conducted as well. The findings of the study demonstrate that the most important concept in understanding and practicing of participation for the people and the planners, simultaneously, is “refusal to participation”, which is a different concept than the concept of refusal argued in former theories in the field of social sciences. Public participation in the planning environment of Iran takes place in a context of existing restricting forces. The refusal of the government to participation and the shadow of power on the planning system are the macro conditions affecting the formal structures of the internal planning environment, resulting in intensification of the refusal to participation. Along with these macro-structural conditions, the essence and characteristics of the participation process have had self-limiting effects on public participation in the planning environment. In addition to factors limiting public participation from the external environment, internal deterrence between people and planners and practical deterrence, are the individualistic barriers of participation. The interaction between the internal and external structural factors has resulted in the prevalence of pursuing individual interests over collective interests, and increasing the refusal to participation between planners and people. These limiting conditions lead to a dichotomy of action and interaction between the misuse of participation and self- placation and temporary strategies and self-motivating actions of planners trying to promote participation. All resulted in trapping of participation in a flawed cycle of action that overshadowed the current positive yet inferior achievement of promoting participation in planning environment. The results of this research disclose how participation in the restricting formal structures of planning environment has been limited more by the action and attitude of planners and people, resulting in widening of the gap between theory and practice. The overall structure of the grounded theory in this thesis is close to the structure of contemporary theories in the field of planning culture and specifically emphasizes on the practical aspect of planning. What makes different this theory from others is on both the simultaneous emphasis on structure (external forces) and agency (internal motivations) in the society, and the consideration of macro versus micro perspectives noticing the analysis of effective environment in participatory processes in urban planning. Whereas in the previous studies and theories, not enough attention is paid to the practical aspect of planning (micro perspective) and the effects of the actions and attitude of people and planners on the structures that influence participatory processes in urban planning. Finally, achieving an in-depth understanding of components of the participatory planning environment, this research, that has considered the current conditions of the planning environment of the country, can underscore the areas requiring intervention to fill the gap between theory and practice in participation.
Keywords: public participation, urban planning environment, people’s refusal to participation, planners’ refusal to participation, grounded theory
