Public participation for sustainable urban planning In Case of Iran

Sustainable design and sustainable urban planning is in need of social sustainability, and social sustainability is in need of citizen's participation. Therefore public participation plays a crucial role in the way to achieve sustainability. Meanwhile 8th Goal of United Nation in Millennium Development Goals is: "Develop a global partnership for development" and city managers has been taken into consideration participation in recent years. Based on the research theoretical framework, the design process can be summarized in to four stages, thus the participation process should be in four stages too, ranging from: 1-Schematic design 2-Design 3-Construction 4-Operation. The goal of this paper is to study the situation of public participation in urban planning and renovation projects of Iran which has been fulfilled in recent years. The main question is about determining the phase of people's participations in the design process of renovation projects. Relying upon the research data analyses, the achieved results would be considered as the suggested principles for the future people's participation and to achieve sustainable urban planning. It seems that the efforts to attract the people's participation would be more efficient when the participation process is executed at the project appropriate time and phase, in which peoples' participation may result in social sustainability in order to meet suitability in urban planning projects. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS