Evaluating the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Public Participation Processes in Urban Management Decision-making; Examining the Experience of the “Arezoo-haye Tehran” Campaign

 A B S T R A C T
Over the past few years, urban planners and managers have increasingly realized the importance of citizens' participation in urban planning and management. They have taken steps to make participation closer from theory to practice. Although many of these efforts have yet to be very successful, it is essential to evaluate participatory processes to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public participation. In order to achieve more efficient participatory processes in the path of good urban governance, this study evaluates the "Arezoohaye Tehran" campaign as a public participation process to evaluate the impact of such processes on citizens' trust, with a particular focus on electronic participation. In this research, the qualitative approach is employed, and to evaluate the campaign, it has attempted to utilize the experience and perspectives of a variety of actors who have participated in this process, so several in-depth semi-structured interviews have been conducted with city managers, experts, and social activists involved in the project. Additionally, the messages of virtual networks have been analyzed to understand the experiences of citizens participating in this project. Qualitative content analysis and coding methods have been used to analyze the content of interviews and messages on virtual networks. The findings of this research show that pessimism and mistrust of citizens towards public and government institutions and the lack of a suitable environment and preparation for interaction are among the prerequisites for the failure of the campaign, inconsistency between the executive bodies during the process and the lack of mutual learning and not reaching a collective agreement as a result of the process. The dreams of Tehran are considered.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Over the past few years, urban planners and managers have become increasingly aware of the importance of citizen participation in urban planning and management. This realization has created a new urban management paradigm, especially since 1990. Many attempts have been made to bring participation closer to practice. However, many of these efforts have not been very successful; in some cases, participation is done only to increase public trust, pretend, and gather public information rather than genuinely seek public views. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the collaborative processes and check their effectiveness and efficiency in practice to derive their strengths and weaknesses. Reviewing the background of the research that has been conducted in this field, one asserts that the research on the evaluation of participatory processes has not been developed as much as other research fields on this topic. The majority of evaluations have not provided the evidence needed by decision-makers to assess the effectiveness of public interventions. Part of the difficulty of evaluating participation processes is due to vague and contradictory terms used to describe and classify public intervention methods and conditions and contexts in which they are implemented. The other part is due to different goals, expectations, and evaluations of different stakeholders. Although some formal evaluation of how exercises are conducted and measuring their impact on policy and social trust is necessary; because of the existence of some tokenistic participatory processes, In this regard, this study evaluated the “Arezoohaye Tehran” campaign as one of the actions and projects carried out in recent years to provide a foundation for citizens’ participation in decision-making and to increase citizens’ trust in urban managers, which naturally produced varying results. Also, to fill the gap in research conducted in the field of participation, citizenship trust, and their interactions, And it has also measured the extent to which this campaign has achieved its goals.
 
Methodology
The approach of this research in terms of data collection techniques is qualitative and its external goal is included in the category of applied research. In terms of internal purpose, it is included in the category of descriptive research. Based on indicators extracted from theoretical bases, it was attempted to evaluate this process from the perspective of various groups involved in the process. For this reason, to obtain the perspectives and experiences of different groups of actors who have been involved in the campaign concerning the process and result of the “Arezoohaye Tehran” campaign, in addition to studying documentation made from it, interviews have been used as the main method of data collection. The interview section was conducted in-depth and semi-structured according to the indicators extracted from the theoretical base with several urban managers, experts, and social activists who have been involved in this project. The selection of participants has been purposeful. Because it was not possible to examine the experiences of people who participated in the campaign, and in order to have proper access to the views and experiences of citizens and project participants, the content of messages on Twitter and Instagram (as social networks) was analyzed. Qualitative content analysis and coding at three levels of abstraction were used to analyze the content of conducted interviews and messages collected from social networks.
 
Results and Discussion
By comparing and matching the collected data in the research with the presented theoretical framework, it is possible to achieve a proper assessment of the effectiveness of the “Arezoohaye Tehran” campaign, which can strengthen future processes and enhance similar actions. This research has investigated the “Arezoohaye Tehran” campaign in three stages: the prerequisite of the process or starting point, the path or during the process, and the endpoint or the result. The findings of this study show that in the prerequisites of the process: incorrect choice of target group, a lack of theoretical and empirical support for the campaign, a digital divide, citizens’ pessimism and mistrust of public institutions and government institutions, lack of suitable spaces and lack of preparation for interaction of citizens and urban management, and during the process: inconsistency between executive institutions, deviation of the campaign from its main goals, predominance of top-down look, the negative influence of the campaign from the external environment, absolute demands from urban management, inappropriate timing of the campaign and the inability to create citizens’ inclusive participation and finally in outcome of the process: failure to continue the campaign, the lack of mutual interaction, lack of social learning, low effectiveness of the campaign, not building a public consensus and weakness of campaign in building trust considered as some of failure factors of the “Arezoohaye Tehran” campaign.
 
Conclusion
Some weaknesses of the campaign, such as the political conditions of the whole country and the COVID-19 pandemic, have been inevitable, but by responding appropriately to those conditions, it could be possible to decrease the limitations and weaknesses caused by these conditions. Despite the limitations mentioned previously, among the strengths of this campaign, it can be mentioned that this campaign was completed at the local phase, unlike many other projects, because many local and urban projects have been abandoned before reaching significant results, whereas the “Arezoohaye Tehran” has achieved practical and beneficial results at least at its local level. The organizations affiliated with the Tehran municipality have been compared to an archipelago that formed a whole and at the same time had no connection with each other, thereby the strength of the campaign lies in the effort to establish coordination among the organizations associated with the municipality.
 
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
All of the authors approved the content of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work.
 
Conflict of Interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.