Formulating a process for stakeholder participation in urban megaprojects: A case study of Sepad project, Mashhad

Urban megaprojects in Mashhad have expanded significantly over recent decades due to the city’s large number of pilgrims and visitors, and the tendency of urban managers to promote major development initiatives. Within the theoretical discourse of urban planning and urban design, stakeholder participation is widely recognized as a fundamental component for enhancing the social sustainability, legitimacy, and feasibility of urban megaprojects. However, empirical evidence in Mashhad indicates that participation in many megaprojects has largely been reduced to financially-based participation mechanisms, such as shareholding arrangements and investment-oriented schemes, rather than the meaningful involvement of affected groups in problem definition, goal setting, decision-taking, and decision-making processes. This reduction is significant because megaprojects generate wide-ranging impacts across social, spatial, environmental, and economic dimensions, and their extended planning and implementation timeframes intensify the need for transparent processes that recognize and engage diverse stakeholder groups. In particular, the limited or absent engagement of secondary stakeholders, including local residents and small business owners affected by megaproject implementation, contributes to weak identification of local needs, limited social acceptance, and persistent dissatisfaction. This exclusion has weakened the integration of megaprojects with their surrounding urban context and reduced their responsiveness to local social and spatial conditions.
Previous studies have primarily focused on the impacts of megaprojects or have emphasized the general importance of stakeholder participation, while limited attention has been given to formulating structured participatory processes grounded in both theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence. In response to this gap, the aim of this study is to formulate a participatory process for the engagement of primary and secondary stakeholders in urban megaprojects and to refine this process through empirical analysis of stakeholder participation in the Sepad megaproject in Mashhad.
This research adopts a qualitative research methodology based on qualitative content analysis of theoretical literature and empirical data. The study was conducted in three sequential stages. In the first stage, prior literature and relevant theoretical models and documented practices were reviewed and analyzed through qualitative content analysis to extract the core elements of participatory processes. These elements included the need for a staged structure across project phases, the identification of different stakeholder groups, the importance of transparency and access to information, and the role of feedback and revision in each stage. Based on this analysis, an initial participatory process framework was developed. This framework consists of four stages: preparation, visioning and planning, design, and implementation. This initial framework provided the analytical basis for examining stakeholder participation in the empirical case study.
In the second stage, an empirical investigation examined the Sepad project, a privately developed megaproject with an approximate area of 200 hectares that began in 1996 and includes multiple functions. Its large scale, prolonged development period, and proximity to marginalized residential neighborhoods make it an analytically relevant case study for examining stakeholder participation in megaproject development. Empirical data were collected through document analysis, field observation, and semi-structured interviews conducted with two groups of stakeholders. The first group consisted of primary stakeholders and included eight participants: three project managers, four managers of commercial complexes built or under construction within the Sepad area, and one member of the consulting and planning team. The second group consisted of secondary stakeholders and included ten participants: surrounding residents and long-standing business owners. The number of interviews was determined based on theoretical saturation. Interviews were conducted in spring 2021 and typically lasted between 30 and 60 50 minutes. Interview transcripts and documentary materials were repeatedly reviewed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis to identify recurring patterns related to participation mechanisms, access to information, stakeholder positioning, and the relationship between stakeholder inputs and decision processes.
The findings indicate that stakeholder participation in the Sepad megaproject was structurally unequal and limited. Primary stakeholders, particularly investors, project authorities, and project managers, exercised a dominant role in decision-making and decision-taking processes, while secondary stakeholders were not meaningfully engaged throughout the project lifecycle. Interview evidence and documentary analysis revealed that, for secondary stakeholders, participation was either absent or restricted to limited information provision, whereas participation practices largely served investment-related purposes. Consequently, local knowledge, needs, and concerns of surrounding communities were not incorporated into project development, thereby limiting the integration of the project with its surrounding urban context.
In the third stage, the initial participatory process derived from theoretical literature was refined based on empirical findings from the Sepad case study. Qualitative analysis enabled the identification of context-specific limitations and structural barriers to stakeholder participation. Based on these findings, the participatory process was refined through the identification of effective actions associated with each stage and step. These actions include defining responsible actors, establishing communication mechanisms, ensuring stakeholder access to information, organizing participatory workshops, and incorporating stakeholder feedback into planning and design processes. The outcome of this stage is a refined participatory process applicable to the Sepad megaproject and other urban megaprojects with similar institutional and governance conditions. To support operational application, the study develops practical guidelines for each stage, specifying responsible and coordinating actors, required participatory workshops, expected outputs, evaluation requirements, and coordination mechanisms with urban management institutions.
This study contributes to improving the understanding of stakeholder participation in urban megaprojects by linking theoretical participatory models with empirical analysis within a specific institutional context. However, the research is subject to several limitations. First, the study is based on a single case study, and examining additional cases could further strengthen and refine the proposed participatory process. Second, some secondary stakeholders were reluctant to participate in interviews due to distrust toward project authorities and urban management institutions. Third, access to certain primary stakeholders was limited due to managerial turnover over the project’s long development period. Therefore, the proposed participatory process should be understood as context-dependent, and the use of this process in other settings requires careful adaptation to local institutional arrangements and stakeholder configurations.