This dissertation puts together planning documents and multiple archival sources to demonstrate how urban planning and the role of planners have evolved in an ever-changing transnational context of Iran. It challenges the prevailing approach in the literature of Tehran urban studies that simply flattens the complexity of local-foreign collaboration and labels transnational planning of Tehran a top-down “Westernization” project. To depict a more nuanced picture of Tehran master planning at the time of transnational exchange and rapid urban growth, this dissertation introduces a new engaging and argumentative periodization with four distinct phases which brings transnational planning of Tehran to the fore, while reflecting on diverse political and socio-economic upheavals between 1930-2010. Dissection of Tehran master plans in each period through the lens of multiple actors offers a unique opportunity for a renewed interpretation of transnational planning of Tehran and the way Iranian planners steered Tehran urban developments while engaging with foreign experts and their planning systems. It presents a detailed analysis of overarching ‘ideas’ behind each plan, their translation to urban ‘policies’ and later on their broader (un)wanted ‘impact’ on the city and its regions. By recognizing a great diversity in transnational approach in Tehran planning practices, the dissertation concludes with how transnationalism first gave rise to the formation of the modern planning system and how later on led to contestations against it which revolutionized the role of urban planners and the political agenda for Tehran urban growth....@en

In 1966, the government-sponsored Plan Organization commissioned the first Tehran Master Plan (TMP), setting the stage for the Iranian capital’s extensive transformation and its spatial and social re-structuring. In the process, Abdolaziz Farmanfarmaian, an Iranian architect, collaborated with Victor Gruen Associates of the United States to implement lessons from Gruen’s urban model, the ‘Cellular Metropolis of Tomorrow’, in a reorganization of the socio-spatial structure of Tehran. After a three-year study of the city’s socio-economic and physical organization, the planners proposed decentralization of the congested old city centre and the development of new ‘modern’ centres of activity along a rapid transit line extending west-ward. This article engages with ongoing discourses on inclusive cities and reflects upon the segregating effects of boundary-edges to argue that the planners’ emphasis on locating urban facilities in the centre of communities led them to ignore emerging dead edges between socially divided neighbourhoods, ultimately hindering social interactions. The allocation of these edges to urban infrastructure, highways, urban voids, and large green spaces isolated and insulated each community from the larger urban area. Through the analysis of the TMP’s reports, this article reveals how the modernist planners mediated the creation of socio-physical boundaries, segmented the city, and increased social exclusivity.

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In the late 1960s, the first Tehran Master Plan (TMP) was envisioned by a constellation of local and foreign experts. The TMP, which has been extensively studied, is usually credited to big-name planner and architect Victor Gruen. Scholars have neglected the contributions of local professionals in shaping the plan. Many depict the TMP as the product of Cold War geopolitics and a scheme directly exported to Tehran to facilitate top-down modernization promoted by the pro-American Shah. This popular narrative flattens the complexity of transnational urbanism and obscures the transformative role performed by locals therein. Through archival studies and conducting interviews with local planners involved in the TMP, this paper aims to discover the complex nexus between national and international actors and unravel how Iranian planners collaborated with foreign counterparts to negotiate Tehran’s urban problems and project the future of the city. This paper argues that Gruen served as a figurehead to validate the formation of the first planning document for Tehran by young local planners who had their own planning agenda. The conclusion argues that the transnationalism of planning practices in Iran grew out of an attempt a policy to institutionalize a modern planning regime compatible with global standards while nurturing local experts.

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Decentralization has actively engaged various fields of sociology, economy, and governance in the development of urban regions and territories. As a multifaceted strategy, decentralization contributes to enrich our understanding of national and international forces, power struggles, economic factors, and their impacts on the built environment. To frame the discourse of decentralization on urban development, three institutions of ENSAG Université Grenoble Alpes, Politecnico di Milano, and the Delft University of Technology closely collaborated to organize three conferences in Grenoble, Milan, and Delft, respectively. They called scholarly attention re-thinking of urban and regional planning of the twentieth century through the lens of decentralization’s values and ideologies. These three conferences laid out how decentralization and its evolution engaged with the field of planning, and in turn, affected urban transformation and regional development worldwide. Focusing on the role of decentralization in urban and regional planning, these scholarly events offered an innovative perspective on research on planning history. This report, therefore, reflects upon the discussions took place at these three conferences to outline the diversity of perspectives on decentralization and its role in urban and regional planning in the past, present, and future.@en

Tehran has neither characteristics of a polycentric city nor a mono-centric one. This paper addresses the complexity of Tehran’s urban structure by tracing it back to the radical transformation of the city in the mid-twentieth century; at the time when decentralization was introduced by Western advisors and became a panacea to accelerate national growth and to decrease the pressure on the capital. Since the 1960s and by the emphasis of the third and fourth national development plans, the policy of decentralization reflected in successive urban plans provided for Tehran. Based on archival research and a flourishing literature of secondary sources, the paper explores how certain values and ideologies of decentralisation and Tehran’s urban reforms interacted in mutually transformative ways. The paper examines two leading urban plans: the first comprehensive plan prepared by Abdolziz Farmanfarmaian and Victor Gruen in 1968; and the Action Plan provided by the Greek planner, Constantinos Doxiadis, and EMCO consulting engineers in 1972. Despite distinct positions, both plans shared the urgent need of decentralization of population and accumulated services, and contributed to the excessive expansion of urban infrastructures as well as land consumerism in Tehran. Arguably, they became a spatial remedy to move people further away from the problems of the inner city and led to the emergence of an extended metropolis with fragmented spatial distribution of activities. In turn, investigating these modern urban projects demonstrates the extent to which Tehran’s decentralization project contributed to the secularization of the society by diminishing the dominance of the historical (religious) city centre @en

Since the first discovery of oil in the North Sea, oil exploration and development operations have transformed the economic, social and physical geography of Scotland in general and Aberdeen in particular. Intimacy of Aberdeen to the major oil fields of the North Sea (such as Forties oil fields) changed the city into an administrative and service city. Since then, Aberdeen has become a major base for the entire North Sea operations. This created new growth centres and revitalised stagnant economy of Aberdeen. Taking Aberdeen as the main case study, this paper aims to study spatial dimensions and socio-economic consequences of supporting the North Sea offshore operations. It investigates the extent to which development of offshore activities in the North Sea has been affecting urban development of Aberdeen; and how it has been reshaping economic, social and physical structure of the city from the early 1970s to this day. Investigating the reciprocal relation between sea and land through the perspective of oil, based on the archival study, the paper first review Scotland oil history from the shale oil extraction (1851-1962) to the first discovery of oil in the North Sea by the late-1960s. By implying mapping (GIS) as a tool, the second section briefly examines how different cities/regions along the coastline got involved in oil operations. Then, by focusing on Aberdeen, the paper thoroughly studies the socio-spatial impacts of the North Sea oil on the port city of Aberdeen. In turn, it re-examines the transformation of the city from a fishing port city into the “Capital of Oil”, and recently to the “Capital of Energy”. Through transforming Aberdeen, into an international city, oil is the most influential agents in development of Aberdeen. Therefore, a deeper understanding of oil’s impacts is necessary to imagine a sustainable future for the city. @en

While the communication of architectural/planning knowledge between core and periphery countries was intensified during the Cold War, it brought about new challenges regarding the relationship between imported ideas and the architectural culture of the host countries. The first master plan of Tehran, prepared by Victor Gruen and Abdolaziz Farmanfarmaian in the late-1960s, is an example of such cross-cultural dialogue, in particular with reference to the design of housing. This paper aims to examine how the first master plan introduced new low-cost housing strategy for the city of Tehran and how it affected the rapid marginalisation of the urban poor in the capital. Through a short review of the emergence of low-cost housing in Tehran since the 1940s and the examination of the two phases of the master plan, this paper seeks to unravel the complexity in the exchange of planning ideas from Western countries to Iran. In turn, the translation of Western ideas into domestic architectural vocabularies is examined through the changing local situation and the role of local mediators. The paper concludes that the privatisation of housing shifted the spotlight from state-led low-cost housing into the luxuries high-rise residential complexes which changed socio-spatial structure of the city.@en

Since the first discovery of oil in the North Sea, oil exploration and development operations have transformed the economic, social and physical geography of Scotland in general and Aberdeen in particular. Intimacy of Aberdeen to the major oil fields of the North Sea changed the city into an administrative and service city. Since then, Aberdeen has become a major base for the entire North Sea oil operations. This created new growth centres and revitalised stagnant economy of Aberdeen. But, the booming economy of oil did not last for a long time. The recent downturn of North Sea oil activities and decommission of oil and gas rigs has been changing the life of the city towards another transition. Taking Aberdeen as the main case study, this paper studies the socio-spatial consequences of the transformation of the city from a fishing port city into the “Capital of Oil”, and recently to the “Capital of Energy”. It investigates the extent to which development of offshore activities in the North Sea has affected urban development of Aberdeen; and how it has reshaped economic, social and physical structure of the city from the early 1970s to this day.@en