Maral Motadel - Master in Urban Planning

The issue of raising the level of participation and people's participation in the planning process was initially onlyone of the responses of thinkers to the developments in the society and the change of the traditional planningprocess. In the following years, the theories of participation became very popular among planners and extensivediscussions took place among them. Since then, how to shape this process has become one of the mostchallenging topics in urban planning. Participatory planning ideas come from political issues and are highlydependent on social and political ideas. In this article, an attempt has been made to examine the formation ofthese views throughout history and its social, political and cultural contexts. The present research seeks toanswer questions such as: What is the position of participatory planning theories among other theories? What isits meaning? Since the beginning of the formation of the field of urban planning, how has the participation ofcitizens been viewed? The study of books and articles has shown that from the beginning to the ۱۹۶۰s, theparticipation of citizens was ignored, and basically experts considered a very small and insignificant contributionto the participation of citizens. With the failure of the traditional, comprehensive rational planning process andcomprehensive plans in the West, this approach was taken into consideration and social issues became veryimportant. These theories, like other theories, have advantages and disadvantages, which have been discussedin the article.

Participatory planning, theories of urban planning, public participation, social learning, new theoriesof urban planning