Aerial photo of Abbasabad hills in 1975, showing the development of a dense residential fabric around the site. Source: Llewelyn-Davies International, 1976, Farshid Emami (2014). ‘Errors of Scale’: The Story of Tehran’s Abbasabad Lands Ahmadreza Hakiminejad Published on Konesh Space From cosmos to atom, what is going to be the reference to scaling cities? This is in fact a very old query. Aristotle in his Politics , argues that many people think that a city “in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea what is a large and what a small” city 1 . Referring to the city’s size of population in ancient Greece, the philosopher was not so fond of a city made up of what he called “too few persons”. For him, creating a “too populous” one did not seem to be a good idea either: “it is difficult – perhaps impossible – for a city that is too populous to be well managed” 1 . The fact is that t he word scale is obscure. The lingui
'The Right to the City' and the Problem of Tehran Published in AMPS Proceedings Series 24.2 (chapter 23, p. 233-243) I presented this piece as part of the panel: Political Economy and the City , in the ‘Cities in a Changing World: Questions of Culture, Climate and Design’ conference, jointly hosted by AMPS and City Tech , City University of New York, 16-18 June 2021. Synopsis ‘The right to the city is like a cry and a demand’, wrote Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville . In the noted urban scholar Peter Marcuse’s words, Lefebvre’s right is ‘a cry out of necessity and a demand for something more’. Despite rather astonishing efforts of former IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Commander turned mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, to portray a deceptive picture of Tehran on a global stage – either by inviting world-renowned urban thinkers such as Setha Low, David Harvey and Saskia Sassen, or by being invited as a key-note speaker by world-renowned institution
Al-Zahra University, Tehran, Iran, 12 November 2022. A student re-enacting the torture scene of Khodanour Lajaei being tied to a flag post by the state agents. He was shot during the Zahedan massacre (aka. Bloody Friday) on 30 September 2022 and died in a hospital on October 2 . City as Stage: Performative Body and the Authoritarian City Authors: Ahmadreza Hakiminejad and Mahsa Alami Fariman Synopsis In a cold day in December 2017, on the curbs of Enghelab Street in central Tehran, Iran, a defiant woman climbs a utility box, takes her hijab off, ties it to a stick and waves it to the crowd. Her eyes stared soulless towards her city, waving her white scarf in silence. The performer reclaimed the street to convert it into a theatrical stage with its astonished audience. This simple yet courageous bodily phenomenon tending to reclaim the city became a symbolic act of protest against the compulsory hijab. In light of the ongoing Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran – ignited by d