مدیریت تعارضات

Urban planning has evolved significantly in response to changing socio-economic and political realities, particularly as cities enter the 21st century. The multiplicity of societal interests and conflicting preferences has made conflict an integral part of urban planning processes. Planners, now more than ever, must grapple with these conflicts, as they can significantly impact the success or failure of urban policies and initiatives.
Although the discussion surrounding conflict in urban planning has existed for decades, it gained momentum in the 1970s and became especially prevalent in the 1980s with the rise of participatory planning approaches. As participatory models developed, urban theorists began paying more attention to conflicts as an inherent part of urban governance. However, the literature surrounding conflict in urban planning remains fragmented, with differing theoretical and practical approaches. This study aims to bridge this gap by systematically classifying conflicts based on the dominant theoretical, philosophical, and contextual frameworks present in planning theory.
Theoretical Framework: Understanding and managing conflict in urban planning requires a systematic typology that reflects the nature of these disputes in different contexts. Conflict typologies in urban planning research generally fall into two major categories: managerial and theoretical. The managerial approach focuses on decision-making processes, conflict resolution techniques, impact assessments, and institutional analysis. This approach aligns with organizational and management studies and seeks to devise strategies for managing conflicts effectively.
In contrast, the theoretical approach seeks to understand the root causes of conflicts, emphasizing the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of urban planning. Theoretical perspectives examine conflicts through lenses such as power dynamics, the role of planning theory, and the influence of political institutions. These two broad approaches—the managerial and the theoretical—are frequently applied within a third situational context, which examines specific urban conflicts tied to space, land use, urban development, regeneration projects, and large-scale initiatives.

This research employs a systematic review methodology to analyze the evolution of conflict and conflict management in urban planning. The data collection involved a meta-analysis and qualitative content analysis of 139 English-language articles found in the Scopus database. Following the content analysis, an in-depth review of 46 additional sources helped trace the historical development of conflict theories and practices in urban planning.
The meta-analysis allowed the study to categorize the diverse approaches to conflict in urban planning into three main paradigms: positivist, post-positivist, and critical. Each of these paradigms brings a unique perspective to conflict management. For example, the positivist paradigm seeks guided consensus, while the post-positivist paradigm looks to resolve conflicts through consensus based on discourse ethics. The critical paradigm, on the other hand, challenges consensus-building as a form of hegemony, arguing that conflicts are constantly reproduced within the structures of urban governance.

The systematic review revealed that conflicts in urban planning can be broadly classified into three key approaches: managerial, theoretical, and situational. These approaches intersect in different ways, depending on the specific context in which the conflict arises. For example, situational conflicts often arise in areas related to spatial patterns, land use, ownership disputes, and urban regeneration projects. Managerial conflicts are tied to the processes of decision-making, institutional design, and conflict resolution strategies. Theoretical conflicts explore deeper issues, such as the role of power in planning and the underlying philosophies that guide urban policy.
In terms of paradigmatic shifts, the evolution of conflict management in urban planning has seen a movement from positivist approaches, which aimed to engineer consensus, to post-positivist approaches that emphasized the ethics of discourse and negotiation. More recently, critical theorists have argued that consensus itself is a mechanism for maintaining power imbalances and that conflicts are never fully resolved but continually reproduced within urban planning processes. This shift reflects a broader political turn in the field of urban planning, where conflicts are understood not just as problems to be solved but as symptoms of deeper systemic issues.

The evolution of conflict in urban planning reflects broader ideological and political shifts in the discipline. While early approaches sought to manage conflict through structured consensus-building, more recent perspectives recognize the inherent power dynamics at play in urban governance. Planners today must move beyond traditional regulatory roles and contribute to rethinking urban policy and transforming the symbolic and physical dimensions of urban spaces. However, the effectiveness of planners' roles in conflict management largely depends on the structural contexts and political cultures of the institutions within which they operate. Understanding and addressing these conflicts requires a multifaceted approach that considers both managerial and theoretical perspectives.

Urban development is aimed at meeting public interest, but it sometimes leads to conflicts between the goals and accepted results of different groups and contributors. The significance of managing these conflicts as a methodological, practical approach is highlighted by the background of its impacts. Recent models of conflict management include public-private partnership in urban development (3P) and public-private-people partnership (partnership model) (4P). Public-private-people partnership is a new concept in urban planning, establishing new ways to improve the inclusion of various public-sector actors, private actors, residents, NGOs, and other civil-society actors in planning processes. The notion of 4P has arisen partly to respond to the criticism of public-private partnerships for insufficient inclusion of citizens, NGOs, and other actors in the civil society, and is used to refer to a variety of processes involving public actors, private actors, citizens, and NGOs in urban planning. For an understanding of 4Ps, it is useful to have a basic understanding of the background of public-private partnerships. In general, partnerships are urban development tools involving changes where strategic planning arises alongside more traditional land-use planning, and the roles of public- and private-sector actors, residents, and associations are reassessed and changed in a process that is perceived as a shift from government to governance. The concept of governance focuses on the interplay between the public sector and other actors in a situation where the public sector is no longer delivering all public goods and instead has the role of coordinating public actors at different levels and private actors and other partners. Central in the shift from government to governance is also the blending of public and private resources for delivery of public goods. In high-standard urban development projects, therefore, where common visions are created, and conflicting goals are managed, the strengths of each type of actor are utilized. The government provides the resources and a long-term development framework, and citizen initiatives organize and activate citizens to act, while companies provide the kinds of service that are demanded, and produce tax revenues for the government.This applied, perceptual research uses a qualitative method involving interpretation, and provides descriptions of the 3P and 4P aspects, addressing conflict management in the new 4P model using library documentation and a simple overview. For data collection in a case study of Jahan-Nama Citadel in the city of Isfahan, Iran, a semi-structured interview method was used to identify the problems with the project and to specify the conflicts between actors, including beneficiaries and stakeholders. Finally, the intergroup conflicts in the project were analyzed using the achievement matrix. The inter-organizational conflicts between the public and private sectors and the groups of people in the project were considered in three areas: land ownership (the land owners in the caravanserai), the type of land use proposed for the area (switching from green space to cultural and, ultimately, commercial uses), and the physical type of construction of the citadel, (regardless of the Naghshe Jahan Square skyline altitude). It was concluded that both the public and private sectors and different groups of people involved in the design and planning process have caused conflicts through their failure to recognize the actors in the Jahan-Nama Citadel project and to consider partnership in a wider sense (sharing the profits and losses and innovations of the plan), which has hindered achievement of the plan objectives.