Understanding the role of capacity building in performance improvement of land management in Iran

Access to land for meeting biological and residential needs plays a vital role in daily lives of peoples worldwide. This access must be specific, sustainable, and pave the way for future growth. Iran as one of the developing countries with a petroleum-based economy suffers from a high centralization and non-participatory decision-making, and weaknesses of institutional capacities in urban land management system. This situation has undesirable influence on councils and municipalities as local institutions in urban land management. Building and developing proper capacities at the local levels not only lead to enhance the performance of local institutions, but also can contribute to applying good land governance. In this regard, this research intends to identify the institutional capacities by which councils and municipalities can enhance their abilities to apply good land governance at the local level. This research is an applied one, using descriptive-analytic method. Data collection is based on of documentary and field survey methods. Data analysis is conducted by Spearman’s rank correlation, linear regression, and path analysis in SPSS. The obtained results reveal that Iranian local institutions need to develop capacities more in land registration, taxation, and localism areas.