Community Participation: The Lost Link of the Rural Informal Settlements Relocation Projects, Kerman Province, Iran (Case Studies: Band-Chah-Reza Village, Chah-Dad-Khoda Village, Ghassem-Abad Village and Shahid-Karami-Shadab Village)

Although in most of the rural development plans, relocation of informal settlements is oftenconsidered as an efficient solution to increase safety of rural communities against natural and man-made disasters,such as, earthquakes, fire hazards, floods, etc. an evaluation of recent experiences in the relocation projects show thatthe relocated community is often unsatisfied with the new residential areas. In most cases, the new residential areas areadvantageous in compare to the informal settlements in terms of utility infrastructures and architecture design but thepublic remain reluctant to migrate to the new place. This paper, tries to evaluate the role of Community participationin the process of informal settlements relocation projects in Kerman province, an Iranian south-eastern state, bymeasuring people's evaluation of their own participation in the process of decision-making during five key relocationphases, namely, choice of new location, methods of relocation, architectural design of the new areas, constructionprocedures and supervision on the whole project. Questionnaire survey was employed to gather these data and wasfollowed by statistical analysis (by SPSS software) in order to approve meaningful relationships. The results showedthat lack of community participation had been responsible for a number of uninhabited settlement projects and someunfinished construction projects during the whole relocation process.