Assembling Iran’s Urban Heritage Conservation Policy and Practice: Problematised in Tehran
Final Report Abstract
The project's outcomes feature empirically studied cases bridging urban planning, conservation, and heritage studies. Employing assemblage theory, it contributes to the current mainstream literature of heritage studies that focuses on discourse-analysis. Notably, the project acknowledges the nexus of heritage studies and assemblage thinking. An analysis of ideological, bureaucratic, economic, and spatial-material elements is undertaken to comprehend the unfolding of conservation projects in Tehran and beyond. The project provides a map highlighting the key human and non-human actors and underlines their consistent behaviour in inter-acting with each other. Paying attention to the informal connections and the formal relationships of the involved actors and following recurring patterns of behaviour among them, a tendency within the assemblage becomes clear: The actors form a discursive-spatial assemblage that tends to knock down its accumulated re-sources. Although the investigation is done without preconceived assumptions and rely mainly on empirical observations, the results turn out interestingly to be in line with Katouzian's (2004) portrayal of Iran as a pick-axe society. Residing within this society, the studied assemblage strives to deconstruct the prevailing structures and usher in a fresh one, paradoxically perpetuating the very cycle it seeks to escape. Despite highlighting the impact of ideological rigidity, the project comes to a surprising conclusion: the primary challenge of heritage planning in Tehran and beyond lies not in the dominance of a rigid Authorized Heritage Discourse, but rather in the absence of stable and solid enough discursivespatial and administrative structures. An interesting pattern of behaviour of the reformist urban administrations in Tehran shows a tendency to use ‘boundary objects’ to blur the tension along the clashing identity discourses and conflicts over Tehran’s public space. In this research, boundary objects encompass mediating elements like open urban spaces, the city council and municipality's Instagram platforms, non-governmental influencers on social media, museums, as well as songs and movies. Through the strategic use of boundary objects, reformist planners, for instance, blended the nostalgia of Tehran's general public for the Pahlavi era with the historical narratives of the Qajar period and the Islamic Revolutionary identity of the 1980s. The application of boundary objects has undergone a remarkable shift towards the conclusion of each reformist administration and the commencement of conservative administrations, affirming the observed pick-axe society model.
Publications
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Reflections on the past and future of urban conservation in Iran. Built Heritage, 4(1).
Yadollahi, Solmaz
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Universal Approaches in Local Circumstances: A Series of Discussions on Policy-practice Gaps in Urban Conservation: A Series of Discussions on Policy-practice Gaps in Urban Conservation (book of abstracts).
Yadollahi, S.
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Urban Heritage Planning in Tehran and Beyond. Cultural Heritage Studies. transcript Verlag.
Yadollahi, Solmaz
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Negotiating Tehran’s Identity: The Spatial-Discursive Assemblage Around the Reconstruction of Baladiyeh, presented at the 7th Annual Conference of the DFG Research Training Group "Identität und Erbe." This paper is intended for inclusion in the upcoming volume of the publication series of the DFG Research Training Group 2227.
Yadollahi, S.
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“When Values-Based Conservation Theory Meets Planning Practice in Tehran.” In Conservation Theory and the Urban Realpolitik, edited by Solmaz Yadollahi. Vol. 10. Kulturelle Und Technische Werte Historischer Bauten. Berlin: Birkhäuser.
Yadollahi, S.
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Conservation Theory and the Urban Realpolitik. De Gruyter.
Yadollahi, S. (ed.)
