Understanding the Concept of the Public Interest in Iran's Urbanism System

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D Condidate,, Department of Urban Planning, Fine Arts Faculty,, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning, Fine Arts Faculty,, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

3 Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning, Fine Arts Faculty,, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background: The Public interest is one of the most basic and significant issues in the urbanism discipline.  The importance of this issue is such that no urbanism action can be done without having a justification that it is in line with the public interest. The problem emerges when there are different understandings of the concept of the public interest and there are disagreements on how one can achieve it. In such a diversity of opinions, it would be difficult to identify which urban actions or plans are in line with the interest of the public and which ones are not.
Objectives: Given the deep gap regarding the public interest in Iran's urbanism, this paper seeks to present the results of the research in this area which was done with the aim of understanding the prevailing approach to Iran's urbanism in terms of the concept of the public interest or in other words the common understanding in Iran's urbanism from the concept of the public interest.
Methodology: In this research, the content of 15 semi-structured deep interview and also the analysis of the 12 legal documents and the documents of the two Iranian contemporary urbanism projects were analyzed. The interviews were done based on a single form resulted from the theoretical framework and the problem statement sections. Also, in terms of the nature of the research, coding was continued up to the time of the data saturation and in order to reduce the errors and matching the codes in the process of the content analysis, the techniques of the agreed coding and the permanent analogy were used.
Results: findings of this study showed that the public interest in Iran's urbanism, is a concrete, general, procedural and content category that is determined by the official institutions in charge of urbanism.
Conclusion: While an official explanation of public interest in Iran`s planning cannot be found directly through planning rules and regulations, a common understanding of this concept can be understood among planners.

Highlights

Urbanism studies in any special context needs understanding the status quo more than any other thing. This understanding is somehow a beginning point that could lead to the promotion, reform or change in the viewpoints and procedures. Due to the existing theoretical gap on the public interest, this research could be the beginning point in dealing with this topic.

Keywords

References

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History

  • Receive Date: 10 December 2019
  • Revise Date: 31 January 2020
  • Accept Date: 08 April 2020

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