Analyzing Good Urban Governance Location in Mashhad Using

جغرافیاوتوسعه ناحیه ای

Article 9, Volume 8, Issue 2 - Serial Number 15, August 2010   

Document Type: scientific-research article

DOI: 10.22067/geography.v8i15.9515

Authors

Mohammad Rahnama^* ; Ezzatollah Mafi; Roohollah Asadi

Abstract

Mashhad municipality faces several governance issues including transparency, providing information, justice, accountability and lack of satisfaction on the part of citizens. The necessity of researching these issues and analyzing the current situation of governance in Mashhad cannot be denied. This study opens a new horizon in this regard by analyzing the indicators of good governance (participation, transparency, legality, and accountability). It is argued that these indicators are necessary for realizing sustainable development and citizens can play a very important role in the process of planning and implementing the plans and facilitate achieving the goals in this area. To this end, a questionnaire was filled by 391 participants and 32 experts from municipality and city council of Mashhad. The Results of analysis based on WSOT model show that, out of the four defined states, namely aggressive, conservative, defensive and competitive, the situation of governance in Mashhad is in the worst state, i.e. in defensive state. It was also found that Mashhad is weak regarding the internal factors (weaknessesand strengths) and has not had an appropriate reaction to the external factors (threats and opportunities). Finally, a number of strategies to improve the status quo are proposed: 1) reachinga consensus among local officials to realize an integrated urban management and inter-organization harmony; 2) accountability on the part of organizations and and prevention of irresponsible groups to intervene in urban management.

Key words: Good Urban Governance, Urban management, Mashhad, SWOT.