Collective Action, Development of Local Community and their Role in Reducing Urban Poverty Case Study: Nemat Abad, Tehran

Simultaneously  with changing  the definition and interpretation of poverty, the policies and  anti-poverty programs have been changed and altered their  attention  from  classical theories of economic growth  to focus on the involvement of  local communities in the planning process, implementation and combat with poverty . Unfortunately such process has received less attention  in the  programs for  combating the  urban poverty in the country . firstly this article  has tried to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between local community- based planning and poverty reduction efforts. In this regard, the concepts of collective action, social capital, and neighborhood as a location for community planning have been used.
The research variables have  been also extracted from this three  areas that represents the capacity of local community development in dealing with poverty . Descriptive methods( documentary) were used in this research  to obtain the theoretical literature, surveying, questionnaires and deep interviews in the two districts of Zanjaiha and Meyaneha of Nemat abad  located at the south part of Iran ( which is called poor areas) .
The results show that six factors including fear of more benefit of others in teamwork, spending time on the activities of the local environment, the tendency to aggregate, and the economic activities of women, fear of less participation of others in teamwork and finally connection with the state organizations about the issues of community are the most important  and distinguished factors of two neighborhoods in social development.
 Also, though the underlying variables such as age, education, ethnicity, and language among two community are not different, but Meyaneha have a better social capacity for collective action which this collective action leads to economical change and exit from poverty and brings a proper economic prosperity for this district in comparing with neighboring districts.
Generally, it can be concluded that,  this approach with respect to its  basic features including empowerment and enabling the local poor people, leading the decision makings to the lowest geographical level and  relying on social learning can be a suitable strategy for combating the  urban poverty and even other fields.