Nowadays, we can understand from the urban development plans and assessments of their concrete and tangible results in the past decades indicate lack of adequate success of our urbanization system to responding needs of our citizens. So, in the new age of urban plans in Iran generally and in Mashhad city especially, a modern kinds of urban plans have replaced with old master and comprehensive plans. In order to, the aim of this paper is transition from master plans to participatory strategic plan in Mashhad city. Applied methodology is based on descriptive and analytical methods. We were obtained through library sources, field observations, internet resources and SWOT model related to the subject. Results showed that the master and comprehensive had fail experiences to Iranian cities and strategic planning can play a positive role in access to citizen’s participation in urban priorities and projects. Two main problems of master plans in case study region are consist of wrong calculations about the current situation of urban structure’s and fail to attract the people participation in implementation of urban plans.

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