Urban Management
Arastoo Yari hesar; Ali Dashti
Abstract
Highlights:
- A significant portion of the Fifth Council's tenure was devoted to internal municipal matters, resulting in a limited number of approvals directly addressing urban issues, citizen concerns, or current challenges facing Tehran. In essence, the priorities of this council did not align closely ...
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Highlights:
- A significant portion of the Fifth Council's tenure was devoted to internal municipal matters, resulting in a limited number of approvals directly addressing urban issues, citizen concerns, or current challenges facing Tehran. In essence, the priorities of this council did not align closely with the immediate needs of the city or its residents.
- Where urban issues were addressed in the council's resolutions, these primarily revisited unresolved matters from previous terms, with little to no introduction of new concerns or innovative solutions.
- The specialized commissions within the Tehran City Council appeared to lack vision and expertise, evident in the scarcity of innovative topics, the neglect of global issues pertinent to Tehran, and the absence of attention to the city's major challenges.
Introduction:
Islamic councils and municipalities serve as the foundational pillars of urban governance in Iran. The Islamic Councils of Cities, as policy-making bodies, play a crucial role in shaping urban management processes and performance. The decisions and policies endorsed by these councils significantly influence urban management outcomes. Therefore, it is imperative to evaluate these councils' performance by scrutinizing their resolutions to identify strengths and areas needing improvement. The most effective tool for this evaluation is an analysis of their legislative outputs.
During its five terms, the Islamic Council of Tehran has reviewed numerous bills and plans, resulting in a substantial number of resolutions. In its fifth term, the Council passed 878 resolutions across 315 meetings. This research aims to:
1. Conduct a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the resolutions passed by the Tehran Islamic Council in its fifth term.
2. Analyze and compare these resolutions with the Law on Organizations, Duties, and Powers of Councils.
3. Assess the alignment of these resolutions with the key priorities and issues facing Tehran, as well as the concerns of its citizens.
Theoretical Framework:
In a local management system that emphasizes genuine citizen participation, the primary goal is planning by the people, not merely for the people. Urban Islamic councils, as representatives of the populace, embody this participatory approach through their legislative activities. Over the past two decades, there has been a paradigm shift in urban planning and management from prescriptive to participatory approaches. This shift includes moving from a focus on results to an emphasis on processes, from reliance on existing resources to capacity building, and from government-centric solutions to problem-solving methods that leverage civil society initiatives and citizen participation. In this context, the resolutions passed by Islamic councils hold particular significance.
Methodology:
This research is classified as basic research with a developmental focus, analyzing the resolutions of the Tehran Islamic Council from an evaluative perspective. Data and information were collected through a document-library method, utilizing sources such as the Tehran Islamic Council's approvals department and the comprehensive system of council resolutions. Given that many entries in the approval system contain flaws and omissions, a compliance method was employed to correct these issues by cross-referencing each resolution individually and extracting the missing information. Moreover, due to the nature of the research—which involves the critique and evaluation of the content of the council's resolutions in its fifth term—a content analysis approach was used.
Results and Discussion:
The findings reveal that 68.1% of the fifth term council's resolutions were bills, while only 31% were plans. This suggests that more than two-thirds of the council's legislative efforts were directed towards municipal bills, leaving limited time for council members to develop and propose reformative or developmental plans. Furthermore, 93.6% of the resolutions were categorized as standard, 4.6% as urgent, and only 1.7% as highly urgent.
Conclusion:
The results of this research indicate that the fifth term of the Tehran City Council may be considered one of the weakest in terms of its contributions to urban governance. The content and thematic analysis of the resolutions suggest that:
1. A significant portion of the council's time was consumed by internal municipal matters, with few resolutions addressing urban issues, citizen concerns, or current challenges facing Tehran.
2. Many of the council's resolutions involved minor amendments to existing legislation, rather than introducing new initiatives.
3. The number of resolutions aimed at facilitating urban development and growth was notably limited.
4. The fifth term of the Tehran council was characterized by a focus on theoretical and software-related issues, with minimal emphasis on practical, hardware-related activities.
5. Key provisions of the Law on Organizations, Duties, and Powers of Councils were frequently disregarded or invalidated.
6. The council failed to address urban problem-solving effectively, with no significant new urban issues or innovative solutions emerging during this term.
