Abstract
Community participation in the planning process plays an important role in meeting people's actual needs by helping residents and planners to identify characteristics, difficulties, and problems facing residents living in urban areas. It also facilitates the formulation of urban policies to address problems and difficulties and increase aspects of cooperation and coordination between planners and beneficiaries of the urban planning processes, who are the main and first partner in those projects. The planning decision-making stage is considered one of the most important stages of the urban development process for existing areas as they relate to the residents and visitors of those areas. It is often difficult for planners to know the real problems of these areas and to make decisions that are appropriate and appropriate the needs and desires of people. The problem of community participation in the urban development process in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the most important issues, and did not receive the necessary attention until recently, due to many problems that hinder its application and benefitting from its advantages. Through the study of King Saud Road in Shaqra City, the importance of community participation and its role in guiding planners' decisions was highlighted by comparing urban trends before and after taking population opinions in the urban development process. The road study showed that many of the information can only be obtained through community participation, and that many issues that are reached based on field studies often conflict with the decisions that relied on taking people's opinions. Therefore, one of the most important recommendations of the study is to activate societal participation and make it part of the urban development process, and that the opinions and desires of the people should be taken into account in the decisions of the planners in the urban development process.