citizen and community involvement / empowerment in planning?

[By Shawhin]  One theme that came up a couple times in our Iran visit was the apparent lack of citizen and/or community involvement in city planning and policy matters.  With plenty of development, debatable growth trends, “good” and “bad” projects (be it building, infrastructure, landscape, or …), and in general a very educated and aware community, it seems odd that there isn’t a ton of (and possibly little to no) community involvement in places like Tehran or Shiraz. 

Does: development + growth + public opinion + dissatisfaction with some trends = community involvement? 

shiraz’s new looks

[By Shideh]  A short overview of our experience in Shiraz:  

We stayed in Shiraz for a few days during the first week of our trip and had a great time visiting a few of the astonishing historical places.  As amazing as this city is (and will always be), we could not help noticing the distasteful trend of new buildings replacing old gardens.  The Shirazies seemed to have become crankier than before as they are not used to the new changes resulting in more traffic, pollution, and a more stressful state in their city.  In particular, ladies driving around while talking on their cell phones seemed to drive the taxi drivers crazy!

 

   

   

 

viva tehran

[By Shideh]  We are back in Berkeley and are in the process of organizing our photos/videos from Iran.  We’ll post short summaries with observations from our trip over the next few weeks (as it’s going to be long… and there were plenty of interesting topics for discussion that came up).  First, today, a few short thoughts and impressions from Tehran: