Spatial Transformation of Tehran between two political upheavals (1953-1979); an analytical approach to making a middle eastern metropolitan region

Mousa Pazhuhan

Planning Perspectives, 2021, vol. 36, issue 5, 1069-1090

Abstract: Tehran experienced a seismic shift in its physical and spatial growth during the second Pahlavi dynasty between two political upheavals, the 1953 coup and the 1979 revolution. Over this period, the city was transformed from a monocentric city into a sprawled metropolitan region. The root cause of this is one of the interesting research topics in Iranian urbanization history. By focusing on this specific period, this paper illuminates the role of socio-economic and political backgrounds and their outcomes in the spatial transformation of Tehran. To better understand the role of the main players and their policies and decisions in forming Tehran metropolitan region, actor-network theory was used to frame all the historical events in a big picture. The results showed that the transformation of Tehran into a sprawled and fragmented metropolitan region was brought about by two asymmetrical and opposite process from top-down and bottom-up socio-political streams in which on the one hand the Shah and various governments strategized urban development pattern and tried to manage and control the city growth, and on the other hand, poor migrants and overlooked citizens resisted the top-down policies and formed their own way of planning, making a regional dispersed landscape for Tehran.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2021.1934894 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:36:y:2021:i:5:p:1069-1090

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rppe20

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2021.1934894

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Perspectives is currently edited by Michael Hebbert

More articles in Planning Perspectives from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().