1. Introduction

Cities have a long history in the development of man’s life and in many cultures from ancient times urbanization has been synonymous with the development of civilization. In fact, cities are considered as complex artifacts of human being which are shaped gradually having had long and varied pathways of development in different societies. Now, human communities are faced with diverse and complex cities whose management according to the laws of requisite variety and the laws of requisite complexity urges high classes of diversity and complexity (Scipioni et al., 2009). Accordingly, it is claimed that only variety can control variety or neutralize its effectiveness .In other words, Complexity can only be controlled by complexity in the same way which means for managing various and complex entities, complex managerial systems can only be applicable. So far, quite noticeable numbers of models have been suggested to describe or prescribe good policy making but none of them have been approved as the exhaustive one. This research aims at proposing the top model which can be suitable for a complex city like Tehran in order to address the extraordinary complexity and inherent diversity in this capital city.

2. Urban Management in Tehran: Policy Making in Order to Manage the Complexity and Diversity

Citizens of Tehran have come together from all races, ethnicities, professions, and cultures with different perspectives, tastes, preferences and goals. On the other hand, the most challenging problems to manage in this city include high density of population, providing safe water for such a great number of people, solving traffic problems, safe disposal of garbage, protecting the environment, providing public health and health diet, maintaining public security and supplying power and energy. It shall be mentioned that the population of Tehran (among 236 countries) is higher than 144 countries in the world and this city is wider than 79 countries in the world. The number of ethnic groups living in Tehran is rather high and construction & development is happening at high pace, too. Taking the aforementioned facts into account, it shall be remembered that the main goal of this study is to find a policy model which can respond to such a great diversity and complexity.

3. Typology of Urban Problems

In the new millennium, the world is facing a new anthropological phase that the population of the urban areas is more than the population of rural areas. In fact, it is commonly believed that the cities are the engines of economic growth and innovations -especially in postmodern era. In addition, some other specifications of cities like feasibility of aggregated economic development, specialization and diversification, development and innovation, development of human and physical resources highlight their roles. As this study is to propose an efficient model to deal with urban problems, some of them are enumerated as follows (table 1).

Table 1. Different problems in urban areas

Later on, the capacity of each policy making model will be examined considering each of these problems.

A) Social problems: It seems hard to distinguish social classification of problems from other types of problems in the city. Hence, social problems such as crime, inequity, slum dwellings and marginal colonies can fall in other categories of problems which may overlap, but they should still be considered separately. One of the social problems of urbanization is slum dwelling which is the consequence of poverty. According to the reports of United Nations and the World Bank in 2006, more than 1 billion of population in the world is slum dwellers which can be the consequence of urban sprawl. Meanwhile, series of studies reveal high rates of crimes in slum areas (Geyer and Portnov, 2007). Robert M.Lombardo (2013) provides ample evidence to prove this very fact that social problems evolve from various elements namely frontier immorality, overpopulation to name a few.

B) Economical problems: economical problems, especially poverty and poor living conditions, are meaningful phenomena in some urban areas which are significant in developing countries. This influence has increased in the last decades by factors like migration of non-professional ones, unskilled and hopeless persons from rural areas and poor parts of the country to rich glamorous cities. In this regard, the important question is what is the government or public policy makers’ role against poverty? What are the best choices to decrease poverty and its subsequent problems? Some researchers believe that capitalism is the main root of poverty and development of urban Ghettos and they even hold the view that “poor people are considered as a factor of stability in the capitalist economy” since most of the hard jobs can be justified only when poverty exists. So, every policy in capitalist economy for eliminating Ghettos inevitably failed (Kraft and Furlong, 2004). Informal employment in large metropolitan areas, on the other hand, is considered to be an economical problem in developing countries. Informal businesses owners are frequently exposed to danger, their information is not recorded anywhere and often do not have access to social and medical services. But a significant portion of workforce, especially in developing countries, is hired by informal workers (Daniels, 2004). Unemployment is the other economical problem in cities. Some believes that this is due to lack of entrepreneurship in the city and how the city is governed and this is created by accelerated urban sprawl (Obeng-Odoom, 2009).

C) Political problems: lack of integrated urban governance and lack of coordination of agencies and institutions for city affairs and lack of urban policy making bodies are considered as the roots of many urban problems. Local governance is one of the key elements in sustainable development. According to United Nations report (1992), many of the problems in the “21^st century’s plans” rooted in local activities. Therefore there is a great emphasis on the importance of public participation in local governance. When the government comes closer to the people, it can have more important role in education and mobilization to respond people. This has a desirable role in sustainable development (Evans, 2007). Considering the shortage of housing, it is said that there is no solution for housing crisis by this huge number of poor people in the world and there will be some ways to decrease its severity. There is an emphasis that government must refuse building houses but there must be an emphasis on improving processes of providing services and improving infrastructures. Past experiences prove that even the poorest people can build a house for themselves. Hence, it is important that the government should provide infrastructures and strictly prevent constructions in areas which are heavily exposed to natural disasters like floods and earthquakes (Gilbert, 2007).

D) Administrative problems: planning according to country’s logistics (Rogers & Lembke, 2001) is regarded as the most important issue in urban management. Usually, the availability of spatial data in the vicinity of towns is either limited -especially in developing countries- or there is no such data. In some cases, spatial data are presented in the maps without scales. In this case, the likelihood of future planning will decrease to a great extent. An example of the city’s most important consequences of this situation are inappropriate land use, traffic jams, air pollution, lack of natural resource, increasing natural and manmade disasters, urban sprawl, poor public services and proliferation of contagious diseases(Barredo et al, 2003). Therefore, logistics is the introduction of proper management of the city.

E) Cultural problems: usually the responsibility of protecting cultural and historical heritage has been neglected among huge urban problems-It has even been given less priority in developing countries. In some countries, cultural heritage is given to private sector to be kept better, though (Lee, 1996).

F) Service problems: the costs of supplying services and providing public quality services and infrastructures are quite high (Hement et al, 2007). However, Lack of proper infrastructures such as transportation and ICT can influence the other process of offering many other urban facilities like employment, production, transportation and environment. The other service problem is urban wastes management which is a growing concern (Obeng-Odoom, 2009). It is believed that the problem of waste disposal is a sign of deeper structural crises like poverty, inadequate facilities, lack of awareness of environmental health and neglecting the poor in decision makings. Therefore, using a top-down approach like codifying rules or calling citizens to clean the environment, as a case in point, without the state support cannot contribute well to tackle this problem (Obeng-Odoom, 2009).

G) Environmental problems: Dwelling in slums is considered as one of the environmental problems. Marginalization of whether the affluent or the poor cause the destruction of city inner areas since this group has to commute a long distance everyday, from home to work. This is one of the reasons for global warming and natural instability. However, there is no way to avoid it. Sometimes it is even the best way to accommodate urban population. However, the urban management system must seek a way to improve it.

4. Synergistic Problems and City Management Issues

Not only do urban problems have several and varied dimensions (table 1), but also it could be argued that these factors are interrelated. For instance, delinquency is a social problem one of whose stems is poverty (Geyer et al, 2007). However, sometimes you can see that the poorest sectors of the society are victims of criminals. Some influential factors which can accelerate the rate of urban crime include migration, social instability, economical insecurity, inadequacy of legal processes and global changes (Taylor, 2009). Of course delinquency and crime would not necessarily be the characteristic of all urban areas; most of the major cities of the world are very safe and secure (Geyer and Portnov, 2007). Therefore, these issues must be rooted in other matters like insufficiency of government processes and poor urban management and weak public policy making systems.

5. Determining the Capacity of Policy Making Models

The aim of analyst by making policy modeling is to help decision makers and target community to have a “Rational” judgment on technical and complex questions about public policy. However, in all policy modeling, there is some emphasis on similar data: a) reliable data derived from experience or test, b) hypotheses about the unknown variables and c) rules or formulas to roughly evaluate data (Crawford, 2006). So far, many models have been proposed for policy making. Some of them are very famous and conventional in analysts’ minds like urban managers and politicians but others still do not enjoy universal fame.

1. Rational model: despite the fact that rational model is not realistic, this model is still valid for analyzing and evaluating planning process. The emphasis in this model is that during the policy making, the following steps must be observed: 1) defining the problems in the city, 2) shaping goals to tackle these problems, 3) evaluating different options for solving problems and gaining the objectives, 4) choosing a specific course of actions and their translations into policy, plans and programs, 5) making attempts to implement this policy, plan and program, 6) adjusting actions with changes or reaction tools according to problems which are caused by actions (Fischler, 2006). Sometimes “irrational” decisions are nothing but rational application of irrational rules. So, rationality in decision making and policy making needs both rational rules for decision making and needs rational use of rules (Andrews, 2007).

2. Satisfying model: decision making on completely rational basis is unwise since it will ignore non-rational aspects of social behaviour (Scott and Davis, 2007). Therefore, in limited rational model by Herbert Simon (1991) it is emphasized that rational decision making process can be adjusted with regards to a set of limitations. Therefore, human is forced to be satisfied with satisfactory decisions versus ideal ones. In the real world, people have to ignore approaches which are completely rational and instead accept satisfactory approaches (Shafritz et al., 2005).

3. Incremental model: according to this model, decision making is controlled by everyday events and conditions; in fact, the will of policy makers has the least influence on it. Gradual reform model is more practical than rational model as it draws policy maker’s attention to familiar experiences and involves them in determining policies. Then the number of factors to be considered will be reduced. This will decrease the decision making complexity level (Shafritz et al., 2005).

4. Mixed scanning model: this model which is a combination of rational and incremental models is capable of finding solutions over a short period of time (Shafritz et al., 2005). In this model, policy maker evaluates the details that are really important and need precise observation and saves time. Etzioni (1967) believed that policy maker must be equipped with two cameras the first of which must enjoy a wide lens to cover all the dimensions of the matter while the other one should be narrow to investigate some issues. Thus in this model, the process of overall evaluation of different parts will be mixed with some more exact evaluations. In general, investigating in improving this process depends on having enough time and its costs. Due to the similarities of these two cameras with eagle’s eye, the metaphor of eagle eye is used to introduce this method (Etzioni, 1967).

5. Group model: group model is based on the assumption that the core of the policy is influenced by interactions between groups. In groups, some people with common interests, shared values and goals come together, formally or informally, to impose their demands on government. Following this interpretation, groups are like a bridge between people and government and the public policy in every moment is the result of different groups’ power balance. It is shaped on their power balance point (Kraft and Furlong, 2004).

6. Public choice model: public choice theory is the result of applying economic analysis in public policy making and it is said that people in policy act similarly as people in the market. It means all community political players are searching for maximum personal interests and policy making and public decision makings are the outcomes of collective agreements to providing personal interests (Dye, 2008).

7. Game theory model: it refers to human collective activity when two or more rational participants (persons, group or government) have some choices and the consequences of each decision outcome would influence others.. This model is used in policy makings that there is no way for choosing the “best” independently and the “best” depends on the other players, to a great extent. In games theory, rational policy makers are involved in some selections via interacting with others. These “players” must consider what the others do in addition to their own requests or abilities. So, policy making is like rational selection in a competitive situation (Dye, 2008).

8. Political systems: systems theory considers a broader social, economical and cultural context for political decision making and policy making. It employs some terms like inputs, application, approval, policy outcomes, policy consequences and feedbacks to explain policy making policy. So in this theory, political system responds to environmental approvals in policy making process and then creates outcomes in the form of a decision or law or policy; they can change during the time when there are some changes in environment (policy consequences). The other component which is of great importance is feedback which is one of the consequences and in fact final influence of policy on the environment (Kraft and Furlong, 2004).

9. System model: in this model the logical sequences of activities to develop public policy is emphasized. This model can be used to understand the events and decisions in a variety of institutional and cultural contexts; in other words, the concepts and the language of this model is public enough to be compatible with each political system and policy making model. According to this model, policy making process includes the following steps: 1) regulations, 2) developing policy 3) legalizing policy 4) implementing the policy 5) evaluating the policy 6) modifying the policy (Kraft and Furlong, 2004).

10. Elite model: according to model of elites, public policy is the result of preferences and values of society aristocrats and social elites; it means although public policies are responses to “public” demands, the reality is that elites can change it according to their interests and public involvement in shaping public policy is a myth since public opinion is formed under the influences of elites. Public policy is, therefore, determined by some people who are influential and then will impose it to the people who have no power (Dye, 2008).

11. Institutional model: in this model, the formal and legal aspects of the governance structure are emphasized. According to institutional model and according to the types of governments, the principles and the power bases which are monitoring their behavior would be different (Kraft and Furlong, 2004). Public policy is under influence of governmental organizations structure due to the fact that when an agenda changes to a public policy, all governmental organizations and agencies can be effective on its approval process in order to legalize it to be implemented (Dye, 2008).

12. Multiple streams model: Kingdon (1995) believed that when an issue is introduced in the middle of a problem, the awareness of policy makers and the public increases. It is true when policy current focuses on a problem and the process of solving that problem, it is highly likely to find an appropriate response. Social condition streams, including political and economic situations, general conditions of the society and policy makers’ votes, can support or negate some special actions. Thus, in the intersection of a set of “problems”, “solutions”, adopting a policy is inevitable (O’Sullivan and Duynstee, 2006). That is to say policy is formed at the intersection of these different streams.

13. Garbage can model: this model has been adopted from works of Cohen, March and Olson (1972) and then it has been extended to the concepts related to policy making by the outstanding work of Kingdon (1995). This model attempts to explain some organizational decision-making anomalies –in particular decision making by “organized anarchies” where preferences are not clear, technology is not clear or participation is fluid (Kalu, 2005). In fact, garbage can model implies random conceptualization in ideas battleground. The theory allows problems to be addressed and choices to be made, but does not necessarily follow a rational process.

6. Organization Metaphor and Selection Criteria for Urban Policy Making Model

Selecting the appropriate policy making model to manage problems in complex and varied cities is quite difficult. As you can see, all of the aforementioned models have pondered positive and negative aspects and there is no such a reliable model which you can consider as the perfect one. Meanwhile, each of them has theoretical origin and a special value to be selected by analysts in the organization or government. Therefore, we can generalize the insight of metaphorical approach to this concept too. In some models, there are some artificial and mechanical approaches to deal with the real opportunities and urban issues. For instance, in rational model, a perspective in the light of Morgan (2006) machine metaphor is adopted, but in garbage can model it seems that the perspective is the result of organization as flux and transformation metaphor. That the real situation of decision making is under influence of validity level and the power of interest groups will bring this idea to mind that there is a meaningful relation between elites’ model and people and the metaphor of the organization as a political system. Garbage can model, furthermore, brings the idea of collage metaphor in which the manager should design, construct, paint and runs continuously.

As you can see, selecting a policy model is under the influence of attitudes and policy analysts’ beliefs and key decision makers like mayor and his/her selected colleagues rather than reality and necessities. According to Robbins, you see things according to your place and based your attitudes (Robbins, 1987). It means the attitudes of key policy makers and their place can affect their tendency to prefer a policy making model. The realities in cities are, in fact, the outcome of decision making model or selected policy making. In this situation, sometimes we forget the real level of complexity and the variety of urban problems. In fact, the real complexity and variety that never influence on our vision is this fact that the managing a city is absolutely difficult no matter whether the policy maker and the mayor can understand it.

7. Evaluating Mixed Models

According to Ashby and also law of requisite variety, information can neutralize variety (Schoderbek et al, 1990). It is noteworthy to mention that in order to simplify the complexity, separation of conditions and editing analytic software is needed. It means complexity of analysis and explaining information can counterbalance the complexity. So, the most important thing in managing a large city is designing a learning information system which is very effective for continuous recognition of condition. This is a comprehensive system which is supported by policy support system.

It may fit best to use dashboard metaphor here. Today, in many administrative systems, the same concept of dashboard has been used. The purpose of dashboard is a system which can receive data element out of numerous sources to analyze them, and then it highlights the pieces of information which are significant in terms of operations in a significant visual style (Park et al, 2009). Therefore, dashboard is a very precious gadget which can enable managers in objective data-driven decision makings. This gadget is a very good chance to optimize the allocated resources, cost management, planning for developments and shareholders incentives alignment. Therefore, city management dashboard is a computational and graphical gadget which is designed to integrate information resulting from complex and stable influences and can support policy making process by providing compact evaluations (Scipioni et al, 2009). Dashboard can be designed simply like a car dashboard that can show the moment situation of speed, oil, gas and sometimes brakes. It can have a complex design also, like advanced fighter aircrafts to show every detail of enemy geographic or spatial situation by using the state-of-art radars and information sensors; it can show any attack chances or detections for any targeting. In general, it can supply the pilot with exact information which is very reliable. The design of these dashboards is complex because of the following reasons:

a) Air fighters are very expensive;

b) Pilots are very valuable human resources;

c) This system in the country’s defense system plays a key role;

d) The possible missions of this system are very critical.

It can be concluded that the higher the price, importance, credibility and mission of a system, the more necessary an information dashboard system is. Today, this gadget is used internationally to monitor the course of development in various countries in the world, and also it can support their decision making processes, their communications and collaborations (Scipioni et al, 2009). Following this issue, before choosing a policy model for a city, we must answer a very important question: what are the most important resources to determine values, credit and missions in order to manage a city?

A) The value and importance of the city management: managing a city is a very valuable task since the city is center of people’s lives. Waldo believed that we must care while talking about state administration as governments can influence the destiny of a lot of people (Shafritz, 2005). Accordingly, now we would like to say that you must be careful while talking about city management, as well, because destiny of a large number of people in this generation or the next generation will be determined in the cities. In this way, any possible damage or any possible benefits resulting from any action in urban areas are very important, especially when you consider their sequential effects.

B) The validity of managing a city: city management is a multidimensional affair which appears in different realms like economic, political, cultural, administrative and legal issues. In many countries of the world, mayors are selected amongst the best and most skillful managers because managing a city needs a set of interdisciplinary specialties. These managers are trained to be familiar with different professional jobs because they must be expert enough to tackle complex urban problems. It is obvious that the city is the center of social developments and the place of manifestation of social values, manufacturing artifacts, and formation of some symbols which are created in the light of cultural assumptions (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2006). In other words, city is manifestation of social culture and is the symbol of a civil society. That’s why city managers must be reputable and reliable people who are able to convince the majority of citizens.

C) The mission of city management and necessity of having a future based approach: it must be noted that decisions and policy makings of city managers has a great influence on the future of human’s society. For instance, when city managers decide to construct a huge complex, they must pay attention to this very point that the land used for it will be useless in the long run, even if there are precious mines of gold or silver underground! So, city management must be according to a future based approach in order to be sustainable.

8. Methodology

Delphi method has been used in this study. Its function is structuring a group communication process. These communications are providing opportunities for people to review opinions, having regard to confidentiality of responses, information feedbacks and people’s knowledge. Interestingly, this method was first used in forecasting. However, it can be used for gathering data about present and past; especially when the information is not enough or its accuracy is not mentioned. Some other times this method is used to find casual relations in social and economic complex phenomena. Delphi method is carried out by participation of people who have knowledge of the subject and must be specialized in this context to have correct selection. Delphi panel is one of the most important steps in this method. Delphi experts are not chosen based on probable sampling but they are chosen intentionally. In this study, Delphi panel members have been chosen purposefully among policymakers, managers in municipality and scholars. For this purpose, the first 34 persons were considered who had at least one of the following characteristics:

A. Having teaching or research experience in the realm of policy making

B. Having Doctoral studies in policy making

C. Having had experience in Tehran municipality strategic counseling department

In the next step, participation of candidates was in person. The goal and subject of the research in the visits have been explained to them and then they were invited to participate in Delphi panel. During these meetings 6 persons showed either unwillingness or being unable to participate. So, the first panel started with cooperation of 28 persons. In second panel, 22 persons continued their cooperation. This process was repeated several times until a consensus emerged.

9. Findings

The findings of the second round of survey are illustrated as below (Table 2).

Table 2. The results from second round survey of the experts

According to the final findings of Delphi (Table 2), it is evident that process model has ranked first and enjoys the first to third priority to deal five groups of city problems. The mixed model has ranked the second which is the first to third priority to deal with four groups of city problems. Then, rational and political model fall in the third category. After these models, the incremental, group, multiple stream are the first to third priority to solve two groups of urban problems. The institutional, satisfying and elite models have ranked fourth and are the first to third priority to tackle only one group of urban problems. It is interesting to observe that Elite model has ranked fourth; however, when it comes to political problems, it is the first priority. As it can be seen, other models -public choice, game theory and garbage can- are not recommended by the elites to tackle any of the urban problems.

10. Conclusions and Suggestions

This study was organized to investigate various urban problems considering various policy making models. In this study, experts opinions were elicited in order to evaluate the capability of different policy models in solving urban problems. The results indicate that process, mixed scanning, political and rational models are the best choices to solve social issues. In order to solve economic issues, rational, mixed scanning and system models have high priority. When it comes to political issues, elite model is very well-advised as the first choice by the experts and then groups and multiple stream models rank the second and third respectively. To manage cultural issues, incremental model comes first and then mixed scanning and system models fall in the second and third category. In order to take care of service issues, system and political models rank first and mixed scanning, satisfying and rational models fall in the second and third category. Considering environmental issues, system model is the first choice and rational, political and mixed scanning models rank the second and third.

An interesting point in the results is that system model is chosen as the first priority in 3 kinds of urban problems. In this era, the necessity of system in the organizations is under emphasis since it is necessary for organizational growth and survival in an environment with continuous changing and dynamic nature for business. Process-oriented actions are fundamental solution to tackle the problems in most of the economic and social organizations (Brock and Rosemann, 2010). According to this study, preferred public policy making models based on contingency approach can be summarized and classified as follows (Table 3).

Table 3. Urban policy making preferred models considering contingency approach

As can be seen, the results of this study emphasize the contingency approach in urban policy making. To be more precise, this approach implies the relative priority of models to solve different urban problems and according to that and also problems nature, the rational way to cope must be opted.