A Reflection of Urban Modernization: Housing in Tehran

A REFLECTION OF URBAN MODERNIZATION

HOUSING IN TEHRAN

by Niki Ebrahimnejad

WHEN WE THINK OF MODERN CITIES, huge metropolises often come to mind as symbols of progress. Rather than remaining stagnant, these cities are evolving and changing. The question, then, is what is the modernity they are striving for? This curiosity led me to consider Tehran and its quest for modernization.

My infrequent family visits provided some direction, with each return being as if I came to a changed city. Rather than the population changing, it was more so that the city layout altered so much over even just a year’s time. For instance, more streets came to be populated by newer luxury apartments, in striking contrast with older apartments only a few streets down. The phase of urban housing modernization that largely led to the Tehran of today could be described as the flag under which Westernization not only pervaded the structural makeup of the city but also contributed to the present cultural and socio-economic gentrification of communities.

At the core, Semi-Modernist architecture effectively promoted more Western-style housing to begin with. Semi-Modernism, also known as indigenous modernism, is the architectural style that incorporates preexisting architectural elements and trends into new, imported styles. Before Semi-Modernism became widespread in Tehran in the 1960s, Westernization equated to modernity, a mentality that dominated urban planning and, in practice, clashed with the established Iranian image of a city.

Housing in particular reflected this contrast as various Western-style commercial buildings and complexes had no analog in Iran at that point. According to Jafarbegloo (2018), there were three crucial elements that Western- style dwellings lacked: access-restricted zones, the hashti, and the hayāt. Traditional Persian homes are designed to generate a hospitable space with public and guest zones more accessible to entrants versus private zones tucked deeper in. One important feature of the public zone is the guest waiting room, typically right after the main entrance, called the hashti. The bridge between these zones was often a court yard with gardens known as the hayāt. Iranian architects eventually recognized the importance of such elements and so adopted a hybrid or semi-modern approach. The use of levels to uphold zone separation and larger hallways for the hashti were major changes to the European and American home layouts.

Apartments also included large green spaces and roof gardens to satisfy the need for the hayat. The designs coupled foreign elements with native elements to ease the transition, and as a result, these semi-modern housing options rose in popularity. At the same time, the dominating semi-modern architecture sped up the segregation of old, traditional housing and newer housing options.

The resulting effect was that population redistribution within Tehran occurred based on two independent factors that became increasingly correlated: socio-economic class and adaptability to Western influences. Semi-modern style housing such as high-rise apartments were often only affordable to wealthy upper classes, who were increasingly interested in living a Western lifestyle. Indeed, the ease with which residents adapted to these new styles made more high-earning Tehranis covet and live in semi-modern housing. At the other end of the income spectrum, worker classes not only could not afford the more expensive housing but also had a harder cultural shift to the semi-modern homes and so higher dissatisfaction.

This outcome was observed in the Naazi-Abad, Kuy-e Kan, and Chaharsad-Dastgah neighborhoods when the government tried to build low-income semi-modern housing; in Chaharsad-Dastgah’s case, housing ultimately ended up being catered to middle class residents. Furthermore, a social norm evolved to associate living in semi-modern housing (especially high-rise residential apartments) with becoming a part of the cosmopolitan elite as described by Valizadeh (2021). This elite group was characteristically distinguished by being some of the highest earners in the city, in line with the trend of the wealthy echelon living in the most expensive areas. Consequently, the economic returns of semi-modern housing prioritized such dwellings over traditional-style homes. These traditional homes are becoming increasingly only available in older neighborhoods and in the historical inner core of Tehran. In sum, what occurred in Tehran was a segregation of the two extremes of the socio-economic spectrum based on the ability to afford semi-modern housing and, in a larger reference frame, the “modern” lifestyle that came with living within such neighborhoods.

Collectively, the differences in physical housing help continue the cultural and socio-economic divisions Tehran sees today by contributing to urban gentrification. It is important to first note that the wealth divide is reflected in the housing distribution along existing and new geographic lines as Tehran expanded outward as early as the 1960s. Presently, the working class are concentrated south of the inner city while upper and middle classes are up north further from the city. Going deeper, southern neighborhoods Naazi-Abad and Kuy-e Nohom-e Aban have very few apartments compared to northern Abbasabad (high income) and northeastern Tehran Pars (middle income). Yet these relations are not permanent fixtures: old neighborhoods can and do undergo urban revival projects when investors want to reshape the area to bring higher economic activity and payers packaged together. One solution to any similar venture is to build appropriate housing matched to the target market group, which are the middle and high income brackets. This phenomenon can more generally be described as gentrification, the process of “middle- and upper-class households moving into distressed working-class neighborhoods, upgrading the derelict housing stock, and eventually displacing the working-class residents, thereby changing the social character of the neighborhood ” (Sadrabad et al. 2013) Superficially, such projects, labeled as “urban revival projects,” seem necessary, but in fact they propagate the same issue without addressing the unaffordability of high-end housing and lifestyles for working classes who are continuously pushed out to the next affordable neighborhood. One prime example of gentrification is the urban development in Atabak Abad and Khani-Abad, two low-income neighborhoods.

In a comparison study by Massoud et. al (2019), it was shown that across two censuses (2006-2011, 2011-2016), Atabak Abad had a higher rate of gentrification, measured by the fact that approximately 64% of local residents from the first censuses were gone, correlating to a higher percent change in increases of construction permits and land price. By contrast, Khani-Abad had only approximately 22% of local residents gone and the lower percent changes in increase of construction permits and land price. The original need for urban renewal came from the unequal housing and urban opportunity across income brackets, and so this disparity is perpetuated. The marketed positivity of urban renewal cannot compensate for the negative social cost. Additionally, it speeds up the rate at which working class neighborhoods are labeled for urban revival due to overcrowding and under sourced facilities straining the neighborhood’s capacity, continuing the cycle. The push for more middle-income and high-income style neighborhoods and the destruction of older, more affordable neighborhoods polarize the socio-economic populations even further, and displace low-income long-time residents of Tehran.

In the name of modernization, Tehran has steadily adopted the look of a Western city along with the problems of gentrification not only at a socio-economic level but also at a cultural level. As the trendsetter for the nation, Tehran acts as a model for other cities and their neighborhoods, which will inevitably hit the same issues if the mentality around modernization is not changed. More than ever, modernization is not as straightforward as it used to appear: the consequences of building continuously and profitably have physically and socially separated people and maintained that division. In this divide, the working class bears the brunt with the changing city landscape and their consequent displacement. For cities like Tehran, the new modernity to strive for is less only about physical change and more social change to address the wealth divide resulting from urban modernization.