Spatial Transformation of Tehran between two political upheavals (1953-1979); an analytical approach to making a middle eastern metropolitan region

Tehran experienced a seismic shift in its physical and spatial growth during the second Pahlavi dynasty between two political upheavals, the 1953 coup and the 1979 revolution. Over this period, the city was transformed from a monocentric city into a sprawled metropolitan region. The root cause of this is one of the interesting research topics in Iranian urbanization history. By focusing on this specific period, this paper illuminates the role of socio-economic and political backgrounds and their outcomes in the spatial transformation of Tehran. To better understand the role of the main players and their policies and decisions in forming Tehran metropolitan region, actor-network theory was used to frame all the historical events in a big picture. The results showed that the transformation of Tehran into a sprawled and fragmented metropolitan region was brought about by two asymmetrical and opposite process from top-down and bottom-up socio-political streams in which on the one hand the Shah and various governments strategized urban development pattern and tried to manage and control the city growth, and on the other hand, poor migrants and overlooked citizens resisted the top-down policies and formed their own way of planning, making a regional dispersed landscape for Tehran.