Spatial inequality and dislocation in Tehran’s urban region (original) (raw)

Author: Zohreh A. Daneshpour Chapter in a book: Published in "Cities in City Regions- Governing the Diversity", 2007, Edited By: J.E. Klausen and P. Swianiewics, Part One, Chapter Two: "Spatial Inequality and Dislocation in Tehran's Urban Region", in English. Book available at: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp\_27%3AJan%20Erling%20Klausen & Related Conference Paper: orally presented in English by the author in the “First Bi-Annual EURA Conference: Cities in City-Regions”, 11-14, 2006, Warsaw, Poland. Abstract The ignorance of the relevant authorities and the existing planning documents in Tehran, have helped the formation and escalation of income inequalities related problems, altogether endangering the sustainable development of the whole urban region. It seems that the public sector activities have been mostly oriented towards replying the needs of higher socio-economic groups. This can be an indication of their lack of will or power to remedy inequalities and to fight against the low ‘quality of life’, not only in the worse-off settlements in Tehran’s urban region, but also in the city of Tehran and in this way preventing the dislocation of the lowest groups to the worst parts of the urban region and adding to those areas’ previous problems. In the long term this means the gradual gentrification of parts of Tehran. It must be noted that some of the problems in Tehran and its urban region affect poor and wealthy to the same extent, as there is no safe place to escape to from such problems as pollution and traffic congestion, though there is a rather clear demarcation line between the place of residence of the different socio-economic groups. The continuation of the existing trends will definitely compound the historically unresolved problems of Tehran and its urban region and will reduce the opportunities of applying any solution to resolve or reduce the intensity of the problems deep rooted in the unequal socio-economic structure. Key words: spatial inequality, dislocation, intra-regional inequality, inter-regional inequality natural and socio-economic injustices, disadvantaged groups of society, inequality-related research and policy-making, private sector developers and speculators, urban region, control mechanism, Tehran.