Community-based planning is a new approach with an emphasis on the role of the community in planning. However, some of the principles and basis of this approach have been derived from the ancient local communities. Community-based planning especially emphasizes decentralization, social capital, property-based approach, and engaging people in planning that should have been considered seriously.

The current study reviews the existing literature, and extracts the components and criteria of community-based planning especially in the evaluation process of an urban development plan. The detailed plan of the 3rd district of Tehran has been selected to be evaluated as the case of study. The method of analysis of themes network has been applied for this purpose. Findings show that the majority of the components and criteria of the approach of community-based planning have not been applied in the plan. Although some of the components and criteria, such as participation, have been used in the plan, there is a poor relationship between the contexts of these themes in the plan and in the community-based planning literature. It should also be noted that the number of components on a community-based plan such as collaborative planning, decentralization, and social capital are located in very poor positions in the content of the plan (not as the key concepts of the plan). This research can have influences on the viewpoints of planners to pay more attention to the community-based planning approach.