Tehran’s municipality has established a bicycle venue “in one district of the city as part of an experimental program to help ease traffic congestion, improve air quality and cater to the desires of increasingly health- and fitness-oriented Iranians.” I have always admired similar programs in European cities (e.g., Paris, Barcelona, etc.), but never thought Tehran’s landscape and culture was bike friendly. I was wrong:
[By Shideh] Tehran mayor, Mr. Qalibaf, has been trying to learn from and collaborate with other big cities in the world to improve Tehran in many ways. I find his attempts promising and in the right direction: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=180227
Tehran can learn a great deal from Tokyo in terms of pollution reduction and earthquake safety. Perhaps Japan is one of the few remaining nations that has not paid much attention to the US attempts to impose international sanctions on Iran – up to debate. This is a great start for Qalibaf to attract Japanese investment and collaborate with the mayor of Tokyo to improve Tehran’s infrastructure. However, an important part of the problem in Tehran and Iran in general is not related to technical expertise and lack of knowledge. The main problem seems to be deeply rooted in social awareness and culture. It takes a great number of local experts on the social psychology of Tehranians to solve the essential problems that are unique to Tehran and do not apply to Tokyo. Japan in particular has a culture vastly different from those of Iranians and I hope that their solutions and policies will not be blindly applied to Tehran. Iran has a history of blindly following policies of developed nations to improve its system (i.e. education, infrastructure, architecture, city planning, etc.) and my impression is that these attempts have lead to disastrous results and confusion on our own social/cultural identity.
[By Shideh] During my last years in Iran, 1998-1999, Tehran Metro seemed like a dream that would never come to reality. We knew that the plan for its construction had begun a long time before the revolution but was stopped during the war and that the construction had finally started after all those years but there was no hope as it seemed to take a long time. Tehran’s traffic continued to worsen, the pollution lead to numerous social/economical/health problems, and the need for metro was at its peak. On march 7th, 1999, Tehran-Karaj express electric train finally started a limited service of 31.4 km between Azadi square in Tehran and Malard in Karaj with one intermediate stop. The construction works of stations, tunnels, and bridges on a few subway lines were eventually finished and a great number of Tehranies use the Metro every day now to get to their destinations.
Iran khodro with an annual production of over 1,000,000 vehicles continues to contribute to the congestion of cars in Tehran and other cities, while there is an ongoing parallel attempt to increase public transportation and metro lines in Tehran and complete construction of metro stations/tunnels in other major cities (i.e. Shiraz, Tabriz, Mashhad, etc.). The limits imposed on the amount of gas available for each driver last year seemed to be successful in reducing traffic for a short time, but people have found a way around the limitations and selling gas on black market has become a common scene in Tehran.
Photo and map courtesy of TehranMetro
Today, we received a message from one of the chairs of the 3rd International Conference on Integrated Natural Disaster Management scheduled in Iran for this February (2008). The main themes for the conference are: earthquakes, floods, droughts, landslides, and hurricanes. UNICEF, the City of Tehran, IAEM, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Shahid Beheshti University, York University, and Cranfield University are some of the sponsors of this conference.
The deadline for submitting abstracts and papers is passed but you can still register and attend the conference. If you have a paper that you’d like to submit, I personally suggest you send it even though the deadline’s past. For more information: www.indm.org. The image below is from their flash intro:
[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:
[By Shawhin] The second day of the conference was even more interesting than the first for me. There was a large focus on city planning, land use, and policy. I’m continuing the same format as the previous post here and getting straight into details by presentation. And again, if you want more details on anything, just let me know and I can elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »
[By Shawhin]
We concluded our first day of the conference a couple hours ago with many interesting issues discussed, ranging from policy to project specific practices to setting international trends in sustainability. I took about 20 pages of notes!, which I’ve condensed here. Provided below are first a concise general-picture summary of the discussions followed by a more detailed account by speaker/session:
General overview:
[By Shawhin]
I’m heading to an interesting conference/workshop in a couple days in Seattle: it’s titled “sustainability and public transportation,” hosted by the American Public Transportation Association. I’m sure we’ll be reviewing some models that would be applicable to Tehran: bus rapid transportation, light rail, and sustainable development. Other topics such as transit oriented development (TOD) are probably less relevant, but should be interesting nevertheless.
I’ll post what we do at the workshop each day on tehranshake, so stay tuned.
More info about the conference can be found at: http://www.apta.com/conferences_calendar/sustainable/
If there’s anything in particular anyone would like to be discussed or asked about at the workshop, I would be happy to be of service – just let me know.
[By Shideh] As you might have heard by now, the Iranian government has limited the purchase of subsidized gasoline, in order to limit rapidly increasing gas consumption. Here is a video of an interview with a few people waiting in a long line for gas yesterday:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-3421300940079857681 Read the rest of this entry »
[By Shawhin] Continuing on the discussion in “pollution in Tehran…”, here are my two cents on the second bullet: managing/reducing population concentration.
I’m personally a big advocate of reducing the population in Tehran to a sustainable level. As it stands, Tehran is Iran’s economic, commercial, and political capital. With over 12million inhabitants (about 1/6th of Iran’s 70million population), Tehran is the heart of Iran’s governance.
[By Shawhin]
Ambient air quality levels in Tehran, Iran, from 1988 to 1993
Prospect for alternative fuel vehicles in Iran an environmental assessment
Environmental crises in the Metropolises of Iran
[By Shawhin] One of the reasons I decided to become a civil engineer was to learn about ways to reduce pollution in Tehran. The pollution in Tehran is such that schools are shut down for some days a year.
I think infrastructure related solutions fall in two categories: 1. cleaner vehicles and, 2. less congestion. There are efforts going by the government to address option 1 – cleaner vehicles – through car trading programs, etc. How effective this is and to what extent it is being implemented, I’m curious to know and would invite feedback. Option 2 – less congestion – however, is more interesting to me.
Reducing congestion comprises:
Tehran Shake 
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