74.60 Raumordnung, Städtebau: Allgemeines
The evolution of urbanism under dictatorship forms the core of the current research. This thesis is part of a research network at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, which studies the 20th century's urbanism under different dictatorships. The network has provided a cross-cultural and cross-border environment and has enabled the author to communicate with other like-minded researchers. The 2015 published book of this group 'Urbanism and Dictatorship: A European Perspective' strengthens the foundation of this research's theoretical and methodological framework.
This thesis investigates urban policies and plans leading to the advancement of urbanization and the transformation of urban space in Iran during the second Pahlavi (1941-1979) when the country faced a milestone in its history: Nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. By reflecting the influence of economic and socio‐political determinants of the time on urbanism and the urbanization process, this work intends to critically trace the effect of dictatorship on evolved urbanism before and after the oil nationalization in 1951.
The research on the second Pahlavi's urbanism has been limitedly addressed and has only recently expanded. Most of the conducted studies date back to less than a decade ago and could not incorporate all the episodes of the second Pahlavi urbanism. These works have often investigated urbanism and architecture by focusing merely on the physical features and urban products in different years regardless of the importance of urbanism as a tool in the service of hegemony. In other words, the majority of the available literature does not intend to address the socio-economic and political roots of urban transformations and by questioning 'what has been built?' investigates the individual urban projects and plans designed by individual designers without interlinking these projects to the state's urban planning program and tracing the beneficiaries of those projects or questioning 'built for whom?'
Moreover, some chapters of this modern urbanism have rarely been investigated. For instance, scant research has looked into the works of foreign designers and consultants involved in the projects such as Peter Georg Ahrens or Constantinos A. Doxiadis. Similarly, the urbanism of the first decade of the second Pahlavi, including the government of Mossadegh, has mainly been overlooked.
Therefore, by critically analyzing the state's urban planning program and the process of urbanization in Iran during the second Pahlavi, this research aims to bridge the literature gap and to unravel the effect of the power structure on urban planning and products while seeking to find a pattern behind the regime's policies.
The main body of this work is concentrated on studying the history of urbanism in Iran, of which collecting data and descriptions played a crucial role. To prevent the limitations associated with singular methods, this research's methodology is based on methodological triangulation (Denzin, 2017). With the triangulation scheme, the data is gathered by combining different qualitative and quantitative methods such as the library, archival and media research, online resources, non-participatory observation, and photography. For the empirical part, the city of Tehran is selected as the case study. Moreover, individual non-structured interviews with the locals were conducted to gain more insights regarding urban projects.
This practice-based research examines platforms and encounters that have a participatory character as a strategy to create lived and shared experiences where new forms of appropriation of the city can emerge. The selected case studies propose and initiate certain urban experiences that induce changes in perception, the exchange of perspectives, and that denaturalize habits and patterns of behavior. I suggest that when these sensitive experiences become imprinted in body memory, they can empower citizens to have more active, creative, and/or critical attitudes towards their environments. Searching for new repertoires of everyday practices that contest commodification of both the body and the city, this thesis is oriented towards open-ended processes of constructing mentalities rather than those of planning changes on the material conditions of public space. It uses forms of academic investigation that merge intellectual debate and experimental practice, joining art, urbanism and social engaged practices in an extradisciplinary (Howes 2007) attitude towards the city. Based on the materials generated by the case studies (combining theoretical knowledge with artistic sensibility), the affective and corporeal involvement of researchers in the situations they analyze and co-create, is sustained in opposition to the traditional academic critical distance.
Die Arbeit „Das Bild der Zwischenstadt“ sucht nach Möglichkeiten zur Qualifizierung der verstädterten Landschaft, für die Thomas Sieverts den Begriff „Zwischenstadt“ geprägt hat. Die Auseinandersetzung mit „räumlicher Identität“ steht dabei im Mittelpunkt: In deren Dekodierung und Inszenierung wird ein Potenzial erkannt, die Aufenthalts- und Erlebnisqualität der Zwischenstadt zu verbessern. Der Betrachtungsraum der Arbeit zwischen Frankfurt am Main und seinen prosperierenden Umlandgemeinden eignet sich in besonderer Weise, die „Anatomie der Zwischenstadt“ zu dekodieren. Schicht für Schicht wird der Versuch unternommen, die eigene Sprache dieses Raumes zu entziffern. Dabei werden Methoden der Beschreibung und Darstellung entwickelt, die den spezifischen räumlichen Eigenschaft der Zwischenstadt gerecht zu werden suchen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Auseinandersetzung lassen deutliche Transformationen in der Zwischenstadt erkennen und entheben sie aus ihrer vermeintlichen Eigenschaftslosigkeit. Orte mit Bedeutung, Zusammenhänge und Raumgeschichten werden lesbar, es zeigen sich Ansätze eigener Urbanität und Zentralität. Die Zwischenstadt hat sich von ihrer einseitigen Dependenz zur Kernstadt gelöst, tritt aber gleichzeitig in einen umfassenden Wandel, um sich geänderten Lebensformen und Bedürfnissen anzupassen. Ältere, den Raum prägende Einfamilienhausgebiete und Großsiedlungen, aber auch monofunktionale Gewerbegebiete und die typischen suburbanen Einkaufszentren erfüllen keineswegs mehr automatisch die Wohnwünsche und Anforderungen einer Dienstleistungs- und Freizeitgesellschaft. Die Arbeit greift die unverkennbare Transformation des Bildes der Zwischenstadt als Chance zur Qualifizierung dieses Raumes auf. Entwickelt werden Qualifizierungsmodelle, die der Tendenz zu Segregation und Abtrennung mit einer neuen Integrationskultur für die Zwischenstadt begegnen: Als prägender Lebensraum der Stadtregion muss die Zwischenstadt einen großen Teil der Bedürfnisse Ihrer Bewohner und Benutzer an den Raum befriedigen. Zunehmend sind diese Bedürfnisse nicht nur funktioneller Art, sondern werden überlagert von einem Bedürfnis nach Raumqualität, Verortung und Identifikationsmöglichkeiten. Für diese Bedürfnisse angemessene und auratische Raumbilder zu finden oder zu inszenieren, ist im Angesicht des Status Quo der Stadtlandschaft eine wichtige Herausforderung.