Despite the several plans developed for Abkooh, this 400-year-old neighborhood in Mashhad is yet being developed and renewed and have often failed in the implementation phase of its several plans. This paper identifies the implementation challenges of the latest of these plans, which has been approved in 2016 and is called \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Renovation and Rehabilitation of Abkooh deteriorated urban area\\\". In this regard, firstly, based on the urbanism literature in general and urban design literature in particular, factors affecting the implementation of urban design and neighborhood development plans have been identified. Secondly, the approved plan of Abkooh neighborhood has been evaluated addressing factors of the first step. Eight factors in the first level; including “Conditions and political views of the design context”, “Identifying effective forces in design”, “structure of management-planning systems”, “Economic considerations”, “Social participation”, “Legal considerations”, “Compliance with design context and existing documentation” and “Institutional structure and human resources” and 29 factors in the second level have been identified. Afterwards, the importance of these factors in relation to the steps of the urban design process has been investigated based on the opinion of a number of experts. In the next step, different project managers’ views regarding each of the aforementioned factors have been obtained and implemented through deep interviews and qualitative content analysis using MAXQDA 2018. The content of the project’s documents and reports have also been analyzed qualitatively, and in addition to observations, the approved plan has been analyzed based on the implementation components. Finally, strategic proposals have been presented to suggest modifications to the project’s structure. Considering that Abkooh neighborhood is an example that has faced several challenges in implementing its approved plans, the results of this paper could prove to be effective regarding the process of urban design and neighborhood development plans.

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