Impacts of Urban Development on Deteriorated Areas in Tehran Metropolis (Problems and limitations of deteriorated fabric development of Haft Chenar-Beryanak neighborhood)

Document Type : Research Article

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Abstract

Lack of attention to urban deterioration leads the city to move toward immethodical out-spread and leaves the inner part of the city empty. Inside- empty city becomes the habitat for newly arrived immigrant settlers, poverty, deprivation and social damages. Global experiences shows that metropolises of the world have been successful in creating vibrant and suitable spaces by taking strategies which can be adopted based on their national conditions as well as benefiting from their opportunities and strengths to be dominant over inadvertent development. Imponderable development in Tehran for the purpose of creating towns, suburbs and new self-created settlements has marginalized the central city textures. On the other hand rural and marginal urban flows of immigrants from the low-income levels of the society to the central neighborhoods have eventually increased the urban deterioration. In this regard, taking appropriate urban development strategies which will internally and marginally root out the problems of urban development is essential. The SWOT technique is utilized in this research is to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of metropolitan developments and to discuss its effect on deteriorated textures of Tehran city in addition to using statistic data (by request) for analysis of the flows. Research process of this essay is as followed; firstly the characteristics and problems of metropolitan development is studied and scrutinized to find out the roots of existing problems and build a hypothesis based on understanding of the issue. Moreover, field investigations and evidences through interviews and questionnaires on citizens and responders across district 10 are conducted to answer the considered questions and evaluate suppositions and solutions offered for the exiting problems. Results of this research indicate the fact that Islamic revolution has played the major role in changing Haft Chenar neighborhood since the development of marginal areas and expansion of informal construction in Tehran reached a peak during the early years of the Islamic revolution. Tehran out- spread development has caused inadvertency of city central neighborhoods including Haft Chenar and this process has pushed the neighborhood to deterioration. It has provided habitation for huge number of immigrant and rural settlers in the city suburbia deteriorated regions as well as Haft Chenar neighborhood. Continuation and expansion of neighborhood deterioration is the result of two fundamental problems: First, problems of low-income households causes lower rate of paying for urban utilities, lack of public participation in improving the environment and an increase in the hardship of household economics. Another problem is that this neighborhood is one of the most dense and deteriorated areas in district 10 vulnerable to earthquake. Low economic strength prevents residents to renovate or retrofit their residential dwellings. Therefore, this assumption is proved to be correct so that the unarranged Tehran development has led to the neglect of the city's tissues and the development of peripheral settlements from one hand and the flow of immigrants, the poor and low-income families to these urban areas on the other.

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