Application of neighborhoods council associations in sustainable urban management based on citizen participation

The development of urban management approaches based on sustainability has been growing recently. Concept of citizen participation is one of important criteria for the collaborative management and social science theorists have emphasized on citizen participation as the main representative of the democratic systems legitimacy. Thus, enabling citizens to participate in urban management lead to increasing citizenship satisfaction. This will put citizens in a situation to have the ability to change the urban environment based on their satisfaction; on the other hand city managers engage citizen's ideas in decision making process and it is obviously affective on their programs. In sustainable urban management system based on participation, citizens not only judge the result of city managers and administer activities, but also involve in the processes of decision making. The following research is going to explain the Neighborhoods council associations in which citizens can participate in urban management resulting in improvement of their quality of life. Regarding this point, Evin and Darakeh Neighborhoods of Tehran is selected for case study and needed information is obtained from statistics and information of organizations affiliated to Tehran Municipality and also people's opinions. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS