2025 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

District 4 of Tehran Municipality, "Little Tehran", with an innovative move, launched the first participatory budgeting in the form of the "I am the Mayor 1" project in January 2022. After reviewing previous urban planning experiences and examining the strengths and weaknesses of urban and local development measures, the "I am the Mayor 1" project was allocated and implemented through direct citizen participation through voting, planning, implementation, and the necessary budget to realize the projects requested by citizens in various fields. In such a way that 41,468 citizens from different neighborhoods of District 4 participated in the project, and ultimately 41 projects were selected by citizens and implemented with a budget of over 370 billion rials.

The second cycle of the project implementation, called "I am the Mayor 2", began in late 2023, and a total of 114,187 citizens of District 4 participated in the voting, and a total of 187 service, social, development, and traffic projects were selected by citizens and allocated a budget of over 940 billion rials, operational, and inaugurated in 2024.

The third cycle of participatory budgeting in the form of the "I am the Mayor 3" project began in late 2024 and continues to this day. In the third cycle of participatory budgeting in late 2024 and in the form of "I am the Mayor 3", the following steps were carried out: Phase 1: Registering citizens' suggestions and ideas and presenting solutions by themselves. Citizens voted by logging into the manshahrdaram.shahrzaad.city system or by visiting voting counters, with the help of 360 ambassadors. Phase 2: Monitoring and developing citizens' ideas. The ideas received by municipal representatives and representatives of the local community were reviewed and converted into feasible projects, and appropriate budgets were proposed. Phase 3: Surveying citizens and prioritizing projects from the perspective of key stakeholder. Direct citizen voting and participation; identifying the real needs of citizens living in neighborhoods; intelligent allocation of budgets and financial resources; avoiding waste of resources; improving social justice and hearing silent voices and creating a platform for influence; increasing satisfaction and a sense of local belonging; and realizing participatory governance are among the most important benefits of implementing this program.

• https://region4.tehran.ir/ (External link)