Urban sustainable development will not be achieved except by strengthening public participation
Journal news: referring to the fast growth of urbanization in the world, particularly in the developing countries and the role of cities in economic development, Dr. Hossein Mohammadpour Zarandi, the general director of economics and urban management in the first international planning and urban development conference on public participation and its impact on investment; a solution to urban sustainable development said: in my opinion, real growth and development will not be possible without investment accumulation so that most thinkers consider lack of revenue, saving and consequently inadequate investment as a result of the underdevelopment.
Investment is one of the most basic and practical ways in developing national strategy. This issue can be effective considerably in the increase of national added value by nurturing the spirit of competition into the framework of urban economics.
Emphasizing lack of capital is one of the major reasons of underdevelopment of many countries, he said, in addition of having widespread unemployment, it causes backwardness of national product level, and in the next step it leads to the economic poverty.
There are different strategies to absorb internal and foreign investors. The most important effective component in achieving to foreign investment in every country is adopting favorable foreign policy and active diplomacy in order to underlying internal stability and reducing the rate of investment risk.
Therefore, foreign policy of each country, the manner of its communication in the international arena, utilizing political and economic opportunities has considerable effects on the phenomena of absorption and the rate of foreign investors.
According to the World Bank, participation is a process through which beneficiaries divide their control on the trend of development plans, decisions and resources related to planning.
Participation has a legal aspect in our country. Paragraph 5 of Article 71 of the councils and paragraph (h) of Article 95 of the Fourth Plan are examples of such issue. Participation is one of the principles introduced for sustainable development. The basic policy in achieving to the environmental sustainability is the people’s participation taking advantage of the environment.
In a situation that we consider increasing population and accumulation of pollutant product in the countries, the only way to achieve healthy society and sustainable development is using public participation.
Tehran Municipality as a public institution has tried to involve citizens in urban management more than before by developing public participation. This organization tries to improve life quality of citizens from different economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects in order to implement a participation-oriented system in different aspects of society and justice-oriented.
