Protecting historic city centres is a low priority in Iran: age-old buildings are demolished with the greatest of ease. PhD student Azadeh Arjomand Kermani has developed a framework for assessing historic assets, thus providing a basis for conservation.
In the drive for renewal, heritage is not safe in modern Iran. In Tehran, for example, a line of historic buildings was knocked down to put an end to traffic congestion. The city council showed how enterprising it was by transforming a narrow shopping street into an inner-city motorway, but at the expense of centuries-old houses and shops. Officially registered heritage enjoys protection. ‘But the authorities don’t look at the urban fabric as a whole. Buildings standing around are regarded as free game, and no attention is paid to quality of life or change management,’ Arjomand Kermani explains. ‘The big question is how we can integrate development with heritage conservation.’
The Iranian PhD student has therefore developed a framework for the qualitative assessment of urban development projects, for which she analysed two similar-sized projects in Shiraz, Iran’s sixth largest city.
One project took a very large-scale approach, with a wealthy religious foundation launching a plan to link up two Shiite shrines with a broad avenue. The idea was to build a large shopping mall to make the plans profitable. Once bulldozers had flattened the first part of the historic residential area a major conflict with NGOs and residents broke out. As a result, the project came to a halt and has not been completed to date.
The second development project in the historic centre, on the other hand, had to make do with limited financial resources. This entailed a bottom-up approach resulting in small-scale interventions. The site was divided into five zones, in which space was created in places where this did not cause any damage, heritage sites were refurbished and unsafe areas tackled. This approach featured close participation by the whole neighbourhood.
In her dissertation Developing a Framework for Qualitative Evaluation of Urban Interventions in Iranian Historical Cores Arjomand Kermani examines the functional, physical and social qualities of the two plans. She also analyses the importance of ‘placemaking’ in the Iranian context. Her analysis shows that the traditional bazaar is a core element: in historic Iranian cities the bazaar is always at the heart of urban development, performing a much greater role than just that of a place where goods are traded. All the major social events take place in the central street of the bazaar, and it is the starting point for the development of the fine network of the city. Demolishing it will therefore be counterproductive.
The small inexpensive houses in old parts of the city are occupied mainly by poor labourers who have little interest in heritage. That makes demolishing them easy, but not logical, Arjomand Kermani notes. ‘Not only are you wiping out history, it doesn’t do the people living in those neighbourhoods any good either.’
She hopes that her method will help urban designers, developers and local authorities to arrive at better thought-out plans – in consultation with residents.