Iranian modernity: its expression in the daily life of public spaces in Tehran

© 2009 Dr. Morteza MirgholamiThe thesis investigates how modernity is manifest in the public spaces of post-Revolutionary Tehran. Contemporary everyday life and interactions were investigated in three types of public spaces (park, street, square) in suburban and urban areas that had been developed during the two periods of modernization associated with the two Pahlavi reigns and after the Revolution. Modernization and modernity are explored as they relate to cities, public spaces and everyday life. First the effects of different stages of modernization on social and spatial structures in European and north-American cities are investigated including changing community relations and the division of cities into the urban and suburban realms. The way public spaces are transformed from places of socialization to realms of spectacle, commodity and control via different planning ideas are also considered, along with the relative lack of theory on suburban environments and parks. Theories that focus on the way different ways in which public spaces are regulated by physical, institutional and socio-cultural frames and how users respond and resist these through their everyday life practices and interactions by using different tactics and the activity of walking provide a particular focus. After reviewing the literature and Tehran's socio-spatial transformation since its connection to the global economy in the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods, a theoretical framework is established that weaves together concepts from cultural studies, environmental-behaviour, psychology, sociology and structural and post-structural theory. A case study method is then applied, using that framework to provide the criteria for evaluation, contrasting and comparing the three types of spaces (streets, squares and parks) in central city areas and a middle class suburb designed by French consultants in 1951. The findings suggest that daily interactions in both contexts are framed by regulations and rationalities that differ from the forces of instrumental rationality, surveillance and commodification described in the literature of modernity and everyday life. Different groups defined across lines of age, gender and access to power, use different tactics to negotiate space. The provision of a diverse range of user settings supports an equally diverse range of uses and demographics with interaction mediated spatially by behaviour settings, policing, temporal negotiation and the practice of civility. The dichotomies that are prevalent in the literature such as the urban/suburban appeared less significant here, as both contexts have experienced increasing intensification, commodification and migration. Differences between the two contexts were however, revealed in terms of: 1 - Communal activities and neighbourhood identity, with these more strongly manifest in the suburban cases; 2 - Major users/walkers and rhythms of activities, with more females, elderly and youths observed interacting in the suburban cases; 3 - Parks support deeper levels of interaction amongst users and a greater variety of uses than streets and squares which are the focus of flanerie activity. Although they use a rational design, the spaces in the suburban site designed by the French planners using a combination of urban typologies (parks, squares and boulevards), have been remarkably resilient/robust through time. They provide spaces of local meaning and encourage more traditional forms of activity, association and civility in a non-traditional urban environment by including traditional forms and elements such cul-de-sacs. Rather than the predicted displacement or replacement that accompanies modernisation, the co-existence of modern and local traditions was evident here, suggesting an evolving form of specifically 'Iranian' modernity. The findings also reveal a city of social complexity that differs from the simplified image projected by global geo-politics. Everyday life practices, apparently based on both resistance to and communication of both local and global culture, accommodate the paradoxes embedded in the juxtaposition of Iranian, Islamic and modern culture