Urban form and state: an approach to investigate cities' spatial concepts with reference to Iran

Abstract

This research offers an understanding of the Iranian historic process and dramatic modern changes in urban spaces and patterns. It studies people's minimal sense of commitment to urban development process and their contrasting attachment to their home, whether traditional and inward looking or modern and extroverted. This shows that people feel alienated by urban public spaces and correlates to the social organisation of state as a despotic system dominating the people.

Theoretical and historical analyses of Middle Eastern societies suggest that the state operates as a system above that of society, and clarify its effect on the morphology of social and physical contexts. The study follows a case -oriented qualitative comparative strategy in investigating the historically significant phenomenon of state in forming urban spaces in Iran. The conceptual and analytical model of space and its production processes as a socio- spatial construct, and the special historic concept of the state in Iran and political attribute of the cities leads to a fusion of some paradigms into the state -oriented socio- spatial structure of urban form in Iran. The historical stagnation of society in the pre -modern era through the long despotic mode of ruling and its effects on urban space and changes in the structure of state resulting in spatial segregation in modern Iranian cities is argued. This is supported by a mixed qualitative research on people's perceptions of urban spaces in Tabriz. The research outcomes reveal that people's attitudes to urban spaces are strongly influenced by state and indicate the superiority of the political dimension of urban spaces in Iranian cities. The concept of state as a despotic system historically separated and opposed to society, is the most important factor in their lack of sense of belonging to these spaces.

This dissertation sees that social space is politically oriented. It concludes that people's attachment to and constructive participation in urban spaces is only achievable through active collaboration in politico -social life.