Analyzing the position of good urban governance and its strategic planning case study: Birjand city

The experience of countries with centralized governments shows that this kind of government will bring a lot of problems for the city and citizens. Fixing such problems is possible by public monitoring (accountability), collaborative action and improving the efficiency of urban functions. Good governance of the city is raised as a new approach to urban decision-making system and running the city affairs. In fact, it’s a process created based on mutual interaction among formal organizations and institutions of city management of the city on one hand, and non-government organizations and civil society associations, on the other hand. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to assess the status of city good governance indices and to indicate the facilitating role of citizens in achieving this lofty goal. The research method is analytical–descriptive and the data are collected by fieldwork method using questionnaire. To achieve the goal, 385 questionnaires were filled out by residents and 32 questionnaires were filled out by municipal experts and the city council members. The results showed that the best condition among indices of good governance was attributed to the indices of contribution and adaptive orientation, respectively, and the worst condition went to the index of equity. The results of SWOT analysis shows that among the four states of aggressive, conservative, competitive and defensive, the good governance status of Birjnd City is defensive.