Challenges of Professional Urban Planning Organizations from the experts’ view

Despite the fact that professional organizations have an exceptional place in consolidating the position of a field of knowledge, we do not see this in urban planning. The fact is that these organizations, which play a multi-functional role, are faced with serious challenges and obstacles. In this context, considering a period of three decades of experience in urban planning professional organizations, the vision is not clear cut. Thus, in this research, we attempted to study these organizations, suing a critical approach, in order to present an image of present status and the future visions. In this regard, we used the critical discourse analysis in order to identify the challenges faced by such organizations. Using a snow-ball sampling effect, we interviewed a total of 19 experts within the managerial and professional body of the Construction Engineering Disciplinary Organization. This is the most active professional urban planning organization in Iran. The research data was collected using the discursive interview. The result of data analysis point to the identification of three groups of challenges, including external factors, organization’s internal factors and inner-group factors. The external factors have the greatest impacts, which point to the absence of the context for the effectiveness of these organizations. At the next level, a more diversified scope of inner-group challenges, which point to the urban planners’ critical views on their professional community, is observed. Finally, the internal factors, which mostly deal with the relationship between urban planning with their neighboring disciplines as well as the managerial body, are placed. The combination of challenges portray a difficult path faced by the urban planning profession.