Abstract: ‘Community participation’ is one of the most overused concepts in today’s world (Botes and Rensburg, 2000). For the past few decades, it has featured as the core of development initiatives in almost every country and has become a prominent method in shaping sustainable development on space (Marfo, 2007). In the literature as well as in development practice, the term is also introduced as community engagement, public or citizen participation, democratic decision-making and participatory development. In general, community participation refers to almost everything that signifies peoples’ involvement in a democratic way (Cornwall, 2008). More precisely, it provides opportunities to the community to take part in governmental decisions and planning processes while increasing their levels of social and political empowerment (Glass, 1979; Mohammadi, 2010). In this paper, we focus our discussion on the participatory practices followed in urban planning. In urban planning, participation is conceptualized and practiced within the framework of the ‘efficiency of sustainable planning process’ through a concentrated understanding of communities’ demand and transformation of commitments with stakeholders into planning actions (Amado et al., 2009 p.597).