Investigation of Urban Renewal and Regeneration Management Policy Changes in City of Tehran (Between 1990-2014)

Urban regeneration and renewal is one of the urban development subjects that have undergone substantial changes in last decades in its approaches and also management process. Despite these global changes, policy making in this field of urban development have been delayed in Iran. In the last three decades, the spread of distressed urban areas in Tehran and their vulnerability against earthquake caused them to be among urban management’s superior priorities. From 1990s, simultaneously with changes caused by socio-economic changes occurred after war and start of “Construction Era” in political contexts, the first urban renewal project was implemented in form of a highway construction plan by municipality with a concentrated and top-down approach. After that urban renewal policies have undergone great changes. The role of actors and power relations among them had also changes in this process. In this article, reviewing urban policy documents of these periods, we also reviewed distinctive experiences of each period in this 25-year duration (from 1990 to 2014) with content analysis and documentary studies and also case study approach. We also used qualitative methods for the analysis, particularly deep interview with experts and stakeholders of each project, analyzing distinctive indicators of studied cases, and finally revealed power relations among stakeholders of each project. These studies show that four periods are recognizable in this period in which changes in urban regeneration and renewal policy, in actors of each period and their role and power relations are clear and explain new paradigms created in urban regeneration and renewal management in Tehran.