Evaluation of Citizens Public Awareness of Citizenship Rights and Urban Rules, Piranshahr City

1. Introduction Nowadays, ever-growing of urban population and the consequent urban activities in the third world countries particularly in Iran have led to different problems in the cities and urban management and also resulted in difficult and destructive conditions for citizens. It seems that reduction or elimination of these problems require enactment and implementation of correct rules and urban regulations besides familiarity of the citizens with their urban regulations and rules and participation in process of decision making and urban management. In other words, familiarity of the citizens with their rights and urban rules and regulations is necessary; since lack of awareness of these issues in the citizens and urban mangers and consequently administrative and supervisory institutions and deficiency in execution of these regulations lead the city to destruction and chaos. Since these regulations and rules set the relationship between citizens and urban offices and institutes in local and urban level, awareness of this conduct increase the citizens capability in effective participation in urban management and reduction of the urban problems and adds on the role of citizens as active elements in implementation of urban regulations. But gap between public awareness of urban regulations and rules in Iran and the citizens has led to imbalance in polices and plans of urban management. This has caused problems such as paying less attention to awareness of the rules and regulations, lack of up to date rules and laws and more importantly lack of awareness of the citizens and governmental organization and even their representatives on the affairs that encounter the citizens with problems over time. Accordingly, it is necessary to announce the people on their rights and urban rules and regulations by education and conduction of the announcing plans and to measure the level of public awareness in order to improve the condition. In this regard, the aim of this paper is to measure Piranshahr citizens public awareness of urban rules, regulations and rights by content analysis of some regulations and rules in order to reduce problems and deficiencies. 2. Methodology This research has descriptive and analytical methodology. The data have been collected in survey method by closed answer questionnaire in Likert scale. The statistical population has been selected by random sampling method. The population consists of the citizens more than 15 years old in Piranshahr in 2013. For determination of the statistical population sample, Chocrane formula by reliability coefficient of %95 and standard error of %5 has been used and the sample volume measured 378 individuals. In addition, for determination of reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0=0.785 has been obtained and finally the data have been analyzed by SPSS and Excel applications. 3. Dissuasion The public awareness in Piranshahr citizens of their urban right and regulations has been evaluated by using questionnaire in two parts of descriptive and inferential to achieve results: The collected data of descriptive part have been entered into frequency table in order to evaluate citizens’ awareness of citizenship rights components at first in general state. Then, level of public awareness of urban rules (four rules) was measured according to opinions of urban experts and academic experts in urban residency rights. In descriptive part, the level of citizens’ awareness relationship with two components of social status, job and studies has been measured by inferential statistics (Square c2 and Spearman tests) to identify that citizens’ awareness depend on what factors. 4. Results The results showed that Piranshahr citizens’ public awareness of urban rights and urban rules is low. In addition, the aware citizens were those who got familiar with these rules and laws in experiential way and obtained information due to legal involvement with different parts of municipality or due to activity in related jobs. The individuals with higher education had less information and the individuals with academic studies were not optional. In other hand, individuals engaged in urban activities (real state and contractors) with low education were aware of these rules and regulations. It can be said that experience and contact with municipality play an important role in awareness of the citizens. So that, low public awareness, besides some other deficiencies in urban regulations, leads to failure in proper execution of the rules, observing urban rights and supervision on urban development, unsuccessful management and some problems in most of the cities. According to the results of this research and reviewing literature on awareness of urban regulations and rights it can be said that: a) citizens public awareness of these rules and regulations in the urban society is low. b) citizen rights in urban management system has not defined proper position. c) awareness of urban rules and rights provides context for following citizenship rights in one hand and it has provided context for execution of urban management problems by awareness and familiarity with citizen duties.