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 often considered 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 that the relocated community is often unsatisfied with the new residential areas. In most cases, the new residential areas are advantageous in compare to the informal settlements in terms of utility infrastructures and architecture design but the public remain reluctant to migrate to the new place. This paper, tries to evaluate the role of Community participation in the process of informal settlements relocation projects in Kerman province, an Iranian south-eastern state, by measuring people's evaluation of their own participation in the process of decision-making during five key relocation phases, namely, choice of new location, methods of relocation, architectural design of the new areas, construction procedures and supervision on the whole project. Questionnaire survey was employed to gather these data and was followed by statistical analysis (by SPSS software) in order to approve meaningful relationships. The results showed that lack of community participation had been responsible for a number of uninhabited settlement projects and some unfinished construction projects during the whole relocation process