Needs Assessment in cities: A Systematic Review of Previous Studies

The intricacy and diversity of citizens’needs are increasingly heightened as a result of today’s urban life. Doing needs assessment in cities is a measure to identify the important needs, pave the way for the realization of the needs, and recognize the constant changes made in the urban life. The review and analysis of the needs assessment in cities that have so far been done can be a means of introducing the best ways of doing needs assessment.To achieve the given purpose, this study made an attempt to identify the methodological and conceptual weaknesses of the needs assessment done so far and offer practical suggestions so as to improve the future needs assessment.This study is based on document analysis and Systematic Review of Previous Studies. The methodological weaknesses found in the studied needs assessment in cities were as follows: the scope of the samples under investigation and aims of analyses did not match with the adopted methodologies; the surveys were limited to closed questions; the methods adopted for data collection were not justified and explained; the sampling techniques used for the studies were not appropriate; the ways of extracting the concept of the needs were not faultless.Using mixed method to classify the concept of the need is the best way of doing needs assessment both the citizens’ mentality and the goal-oriented models can be used in this method. Using appropriate methods and fields based on Needassessment models is the another Conclusion of this paper.