The nature and necessity of core planning lines for the 7th development plan

Iran is the world’s first developing country that has been engaged in compiling and executing development plans. Despite more than 70 years of planning and implementation of 11 five-year development plans, it has not only failed to achieve the desired success but is lagging behind many countries. One of the important perspectives in explaining this problem is the structural formation and the selection of the type of development plans and their impacts on Iran’s economy, society, politics, and culture. The initial emergence of planning in Iran was a combination of internal and external needs, geopolitical situation, and cognitive impairment. Therefore, while combining the above factors, a type of planning has been formed in the country that has not yet become native and internalized even after 7 decades and lack common understanding among stakeholders and officials about its performance and shortcomings. Iran’s current comprehensive planning has numerous shortcomings that cause a continuous increase in the country’s problems and difficulties to the point where they halt the development process. For this reason, all countries abandoned a comprehensive planning about 5 decades ago, but for various reasons, this is still dominant in Iran’s planning system. This article discusses the process of forming a comprehensive planning and its shortcomings in comparison with limited core planning. Ultimately, through utilizing global experiences, a core planning is explained and introduced as a comprehensive planning.