Challenges of Urban Manager's Ethical Decision-Making in Urban Development Plans; Case Study: Comprehensive Plan of Abasabad Area, Tehran (2005)

Studying the failure and ineffectiveness of urban development plans in Iran has been considered by many researchers. In the meantime, the decisions of urban managers cannot be denied in strengthening these challenges. If we look closer to the matter of them, it seems that "ethics" is a point that is sometimes not explained properly or is sometimes forgotten. At the same time, the shortage of models and codified ethical principles allows each person to take action that is perhaps the best in his view but is not ethically optimal. So this research aimed to offer an ethical decision-making framework for urban managers in developing plans. The framework divided the ethical decision-making to procedural and substantive approaches. The substantive-oriented approach is focused on analyzing the context and procedural approach is focused on the ethical decision-making process. To study this framework, "Comprehensive Plan of Abasbad Lands (ratified in 2005)" was chosen as a case study and its processes, from procurement to implementation, were analyzed by the substantive view. Due to the emphasis of study on the role of urban managers, its implementation process also was analyzed from the procedural approach viewpoint.
The research method is mixed-method; in other words, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The research method was simultaneous type that it carries out qualitative and quantitive methods simultaneously and both with the same purpose. In fact, the common goal of both methods has been a response to the single theoretical framework. In quantitative part, survey and questionnaire were used for data collection. The Directed content analysis method has been used in qualitative part to analyze the open questions of the questionnaire, documents, laws, etc. To achieve valid results of statistical sampling, the snowball technique was used. The study population included all experts, scholars and urban managers dealing with the plan and total of 23 questionnaires were received. Quantitative data analysis used nonparametric statistics, such as Friedman test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Kruskal-Wallis test.
Substantive analysis of ethical decision-making in the processes of procurement to implement plan shows that as the process moves from procurement into the implement, it gets farther from ethical content and this difference is more pronounced for the project implementation. For the procedural dimension of ethical decision-making that particularly addresses the implementation of the project, it was shown that as procedures get closer to ethical decision implementation, its desirability is reduced. The results lead to the analysis of challenges that urban managers are facing. Some of the main challenges of ethical decision-making in preparation and approval processes can be stated in the ineffectiveness of the urban management system and the impact of individual factors. Also, challenges facing the implementation process include duality in the nature of land management, external pressure against the ethics and imbalance to provide both private and public interests. Another notable result of this study is a high convergence of responders and lack of impact of their personal positions, which leads to higher reliability of the overall results of the study.