The relationship between perceived social justice and participation of residents in the development of the city of Tabriz

The concept of sustainable urban development is based on human-environment relationship and it considers the development of urban facilities with regard to environmental considerations, and social justice. With the development of urbanization, concepts related to sustainable development have entered into this area and the concept of sustainable urban development is the outcome of new views towards social, spatial and environmental justice as they regard the city. Social justice in urban environment relates to the preservation of the interest of different social groups by means of distribution of urban resources, revenues and costs. An issue surrounding environmental justice, emphasizing the close association it has with social justice, necessitates a need for social auditing of public institutions and organizations. In this study, four dimensions of perceived social justice, that is, economic individualism, needs, equality, and fairness are considered and its relation to resident's participation in development of Tabriz is analyzed. The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between perceived social justices with the degree of resident's participation in development of Tabriz. Accordingly the researcher used a questionnaire to collect the research data. The study sample included 384 residents of ten regions of Tabriz. Structural equation modeling with LISREL software was used to analyze the relationship between variables. Based on the findings, there is a direct relationship between the four dimensions of perceived social justice and the degree of resident's participation in the development of the city.