The Interplay between Urban Densification and Place Change in Tehran; Implications for Place-Based Social Sustainability

Vafa Dianati
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Vafa Dianati: Bartlett School of Planning, Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, London WC1E 6DH, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-18

Abstract: Recent scholarship on urban social sustainability has redirected its attention to the role of place-based theories and practices in achieving and sustaining social outcomes. The notion of place and its centrality in everyday life of urban citizens could be used as an anchor point to study urbanisation processes and rapid urban changes. This paper employs a place-based framework of urban social sustainability in parallel to a framework of ‘place transformation’ to examine the consequences of soft densification on place attachment at the neighbourhood level in Tehran, Iran. Through analysing sixteen semi-structured interviews with residents, this paper argues that the temporal element of soft densification makes it a place undermining process, eradicating individual and collective place memory through resetting the time of the place. Moreover, the findings highlighted parallel trajectories in the meanings associated to place by residents which underscore the contradiction between ‘lived space’ and ‘conceived space’. Furthermore, it was found that loss of place attachment due to urban densification commonly leads to passive modes of response such changing lifestyle and daily routines, and voluntary relocating to adapt to the new socio-spatial order.

Keywords: place; social sustainability; place attachment; urban densification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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