A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Public Administration and Management in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Award of Degree of Master of Public Administration (MPA) of Mzumbe UniversityCommunity participation in development programmes is revealed to be vital in development approach in order to ensure success and sustainability of community based programmes and projects. It provides the chance for local people and other stakeholders to come together at one Table for the purpose of sharing experience and decision making on the provision of social services in the community. This study sought to investigate the effectiveness of urban community participation in planning and implementation of development programme and projects. Specifically the study expects to address the following four specific objectives, first to identify and describe development programmes and projects, second to investigate the extent to which urban community participate in planning and implementation of the development programs and projects, third to describe and examine the challenges of community participation in urban development program and projects, and lastly to examine the ways used by the local government authority to motivate community participation in development programmes and projects. The research findings revealed that community participation in the development process has numerous benefits in service delivery such as provision of required services, satisfied services, proper use of public resources and speed up development process. The implication of these findings to the policy makers and other stakeholders is to design strategies that could ensure that there is effective participation of local community in decision making process from setting priorities, develop plans as well as proper utilization of human resource and implementation of programmes and projects which have been identified by the community. Also the policy should state clearly the importance of conducting training to mtaa leaders at the ward level.