Abstract—The rapid growth of the human population and the environmental degradation associated with increased consumption of resources raises concerns on sustainability. Social sustainability constitutes one of the three dimensions of sustainability together with environmental and economic dimensions. Even though there is not an agreement on what social sustainability consists of, it is a well known fact that it necessitates user participation. The fore, this study aims to observe and analyze the role of user participation on social sustainability. In this paper, the links between user participation and indicators of social sustainability have been searched. In order to achieve this, first of all a literature review on social sustainability has been done; accordingly, the information obtained from researches has been used in the evaluation of the projects conducted in the developing countries considering user participation. These examples are taken as role models with pros and cons for the development of the checklist for the evaluation of the case studies. Furthermore, a case study over the post earthquake residential settlements in Turkey have been conducted. The case study projects are selected considering different building scales (differing number of residential units), scale of the problem (post-earthquake settlements, rehabilitation of shanty dwellings) and the variety of users (differing socio-economic dimensions). Decision- making, design, building and usage processes of the selected projects and actors of these processes have been investigated in the context of social sustainability. The cases include: New Gourna Village by Hassan Fathy, Quinta Monroy dwelling units conducted in Chile by Alejandro Aravena and Beyköy and Beriköy projects in Turkey aiming to solve the problem of housing which have appeared after the earthquake happened in 1999 have been investigated. Results of the study possible links between social sustainability indicators and user participation and links between user participation and the peculiarities of place. Results are compared and discussed in order to find possible solutions to form social sustainability through user participation. Results show that social sustainability issues depend on communities' characteristics, socio-economic conditions and user profile but user participation has positive effects on some social sustainability indicators like user satisfaction, a sense of belonging and social stability. Keywords—Housing projects, Residential areas, Social sustainability, User participation. Hasan Taştan, Research Assistant is with Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey (e-mail: hasantastan88@hotmail.com). Ayşen Ciravoğlu, Assoc. Prof. Dr. is with Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey (phone: 00902123832601; fax: 00902123832650; e- mail:aysenc@gmail.com). I. INTRODUCTION HE concept of sustainable development has gained an importance in national and international scale following the publication of the Brundlant report. In this report sustainable development is defined as ''development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.'' [1]. Concept of sustainability and sustainable development has been used very often for different purposes and reasons in various fields for 29 years since the report has been published. No matter what is the meaning being attributed to these notions, common idea in sustainable development literature favors that sustainability has three main dimensions which consists of social, financial and environmental issues which are also considered to be related to each other in some way [2]. Traditionally, sustainable development concept takes interest in environmental issues such as recycling, efficient use of energy, water resources, carbon emission and structure design and targets ecologically sustainable designs which minimize the damage done to ecology accordingly. Aside from environmental disasters occurring due to increase in world population and urbanization rate, increase in social problems is at stake too. The matter of social sustainability has come into prominence with the recent contributions of researchers from various disciplines and it has begun to be considered as one of the most important elements of sustainable development. Conception of modern sustainable development which takes social aspect of sustainable development into consideration too includes subjects regarding increase in life quality such as education, fitting into society. Social sustainability states that future generations maintaining same or better conditions compared to present generation in terms of important life quality indicators such as human rights, education, health, democracy and social cohesion. The reason of that there is no common language and a universal measurement system in determining objectives of social sustainability, defining what social sustainability is and measuring it is that social, socioeconomic and cultural data varies depending on space and time as a nature of it. Even though there is not an agreement on what social sustainability consists of, it necessitates user participation by its people- oriented considerations. The user participation and its relation with social sustainability The Role of User Participation on Social Sustainability: A Case Study on Four Residential Areas Hasan Taştan, Ayşen Ciravoğlu T World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Vol:10, No:1, 2016 206 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 10(1) 2016 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Humanities and Social Sciences Vol:10, No:1, 2016 publications.waset.org/10003484/pdf