An Study of Sense of place Effect on Social Capital and Participation in Mashhad's Neighborhoods

New concepts have formed in transition of traditional urban planning concept that their essence refers to sociology and even psychology and so has made urban planning interdisciplinary concept, could be titled social capital and sense of place and participation. In fact places have two aspects, material and immaterial and can form emotional feeling among its residents. These feeling which led to a kind of local identity, belonging to a place and sense of place are considerable schema in postmodern planning specially in urban community scale. Sense of Place is emotive bonds and attachments, both positive and negative, that people develop or experience in particular locations and environments. Capital is a reproductive wealth or a resource a person use to make income but it can presented a new concept of capital, capital is a public resource can form as monetary or non monetary and tangible or intangible forms. Social capital at the first entered in urban planning by Jane Jacobs at Life and Death of USA Metropolises book and extended by Colman, Bart, Putnam and Portz. Jacobs in his book identified social capital as compressed social networks that in old urban realms in relation to subjects impress the quality of life, make decision and react; he presented the social capital concept in relation to urban spatial, physical discussions and urban communities. The term participation is generally used to describe the type and level of stakeholder or beneficiary involvement in development planning, projects, and practices. In the literature review the relations between three basic phenomena of the article have done. The concept of social capital relates to types of interactions between people which can bring benefits such as better prospects and well-being and, in some cases, more civil engagement. Putnam’s causal model suggests a sequence in which, broadly speaking, participation in associational activity produced greater levels of trust and civic engagement. We will follow that sequence here and with regarding the effect of sense of place on participation and social capital, in this research we’ll examine the process of ‘how sense of place impact on participation and social capital’, another aim of research is introducing usage of structural equation model (SEM) (That is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relations using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions) in urban studies field. So based on 500 person sampling in Mashhad’s community resident in 4th and 11th zone, sense of place, participation and social capital were describe using factor analysis, then different type of relationship between indicators was studied. Result shows that first model which represents the effect of sense of place on social capital throughout participation is the fittest model; in other word increasing sense of place led to higher participation and rising in participation redound to more social capital. Finally this article suggests that; urban planner should consider sense of place as important phenomenon in community development and should mobilize communities to improve it for better urban life.