urban institutions and citizen participation in urban affairs(case study: esfehan city)

extended abstract introduction participation, as the key element in achieving development goals especially civic development, has considerable importance. when people have much more participation in affairs, it is more possible to be successful. in these societies, low and deprivated class of society will benefit from participation results and its advantages. from the other hand, these days, participation is not a choice for citizens but a necessity. it is a necessity which leads to sustainable civic development. there are many influential factors in people’s participation in civic affairs considered in this paper. therefore, aim of this paper is to study effects of civic institutions on civilians’ participation in affairs. these days citizen’s participation in urban affairs is not a choice. it is a necessity that can lead to sustainable development. in iran’s society, the need for participation is considerable since that developing and industrial societies have been faced with pervasive phenomenon such as urbanization and population growth during a hundred years ago. so in urban management there is an essential problem that is human empowerment, reduction of urban problems and development of iranian’ society during the transition from traditional to modern society that leads to optimal utilization of existing capabilities and talents of citizens in participatory programs. the metropolises of country such as isfahan metropolitan increased the human needs and urban environmental problems in a vast area. some cases such as observing traffic, paying attention to green space, corporation with municipalities about construction, collecting garbage and the other serious problems are symbols of cases that urban managers have been facing with them from theorists point of view, there are many influential factors that affects people’s participation in urban affaires. here we try to study the urban organizations’ effect on citizen’s participation in urban affairs. methodology the research method is qualitative one. we used survey method to collect the data and analyze them. the population of this study includes the heads of household citizens in isfahan who were 444552 based on census statistics. in order to study the variables such as citizen’s participation in urban affairs, satisfaction from municipality function, civil council, parliament member, dispute resolution council, organization trust and social satisfaction. we choose 700 people as samples through multi stage sampling method. the measuring tool was questionnaire. the reliability of variables (0.7) was in suitable degree. we used regression, descriptive and deductive analysis, and multi variable and path analysis. in order to study the whole direct and indirect effects we used lisrel method. the data were analyzed by spss16 software. methodology of this study is an applied one. that is, aim is to develop the knowledge in an especial field (participation). data collection method was survey and we focused on characteristics of statistical population and tried to explain the present situation and find correlation between them. this study is in large scale and cross sectional one. it means that we gathered the data in different times and from different cases. in order to evaluate the validity of measurement took related to social participation items; we used content validity through referring to sociology and civic geography professors. to test the reliability of items, we used cronbach alpha which was in acceptable level. results and discussion the data analysis shows that firstly, mean of isfahan citizen’s participation in urban affaires were more than average. secondly, mean of citizen’s satisfaction from municipality function was less than average. thirdly, citizens were not satisfied by council’s functions. fourthly, they were not also satisfied by mp functions. fifthly, most of citizens were satisfied by dispute resolution council member’s activities. the results of deductive analysis show that there is a positive, direct and meaningful relationship between municipality, dispute resolution council, mp, council member’s activities and citizen’s social participation in urban affaires. in the other words, the more citizens satisfaction, the more citizens participation. according to regression and structural models, citizen’s social participation have been affected by urban organizations (municipality islamic urban councils, dispute resolution council).the social satisfaction had the least affect on dependent variable. it should be noted that mp works in parliament were rejected in regression model. on the whole, the variables in regression model could explain 36% of citizen’s participation changes. isfahan citizens have had high rate of participation in social affairs. their trust to civic authorities was in lower level. on the whole, social satisfaction was more than average. that is, majority of citizens were not satisfied by municipality, civic council’s officials, and parliament members. however, they were satisfied by performance of dispute resolution councils. also, the results show that: there was significant correlation between municipality, civic council’s officials, and parliament members, dispute resolution councils performance with social participation. it means that institutions responsible for civic affaires have been influential in participation of citizens in civic affairs. findings of this study show that there is significant correlation between institutional trust and participation. when there is high rate of institutional trust, citizen’s participation in civic affairs will be high. there was also linear correlation between social satisfaction and rate of social participation. when in a society social satisfaction is high, citizens will have much more participation in civic affaires. path analysis results show that independent variables could explain 37% of dependent variable changes. conclusion urban councils such as, municipality islamic urban councils, dispute resolution council, mp and their function were among the influential factors in citizen’s participation in isfahan metropolitan. therefore, satisfaction can lead to optimizing the citizen’s participation. between institutions in the city, satisfaction of the dispute resolution board and city council in reduction of urban social problems is considered the most fundamental institution therefore, the agency should revise its performance over the last.