Tehran Urban Reforms Between Two Revolutions Developmentalism, Worlding Urbanism and Neoliberalism

The will to improve through urban reform has a long and troubled history in Iran, enduring continuities from the first attempts at modernization in the Constitution Revolution (1906-1911) to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Such history has witnessed elitist as well as populist urban modernizations. This research examines the commonalities between urban reforms in Tehran with a focus on the 1990s reform. A pioneer plan of a broader economic reconstruction project launched after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini (1989), the 1990s urban reform in Tehran was a multilayered project that articulated a modernist urban renewal and a democratic cultural change with a mayor-centred decentralization. The worlding character of the reform reflected a reaction to international isolation and to the extreme particularism of the Iranian situation, and signified a shift from the populist Islamic urbanism of the 1979 Revolution toward neoliberal urban governance. While these urban reforms symbolize the different development ambitions of each era, they share a focus on speeding up the mobility in the city, intensification of land use, disciplining space, and beautifying the city. They draw our attention to the local production of capitalism, globalization and neoliberalism through urban processes and planning. They have contributed to the construction of a developmental state as well as its dismantling in Iran. They were exclusive and inclusive at the same time, opening new horizons for engaging the public in political struggles over the right to the city, while leaving the city in a perpetual speculative redevelopment cycle of the physical landscape. This research consists of a macro analysis of five major interventions in the city through the last century, and field research on two case studies of Navab Highway and Enqelab Street, linked to the 1990s reform. These case studies narrate two distinctive processes common to all urban reforms in Tehran: a relatively uncontested implementation of modernizing projects where the public apprehension of improvement adopts the notions developed by planners or reconstruction agendas (ex. Navab Highway project) and a parallel processes of resisting the state attempts to regulate and remap the public spaces through imposing desired functions or conflicting uses of the space (Enqelab Street).