Assessment of Development Plans of Tehran Metropolis and its Region from the Perspective of Climate Change Impacts

Abstract

Today, climate change has become one of the most serious challenges for cities around the world, especially in developing countries where urbanisation is rapidly growing. Urban centres must be prepared with the right tools to deal with the effects of climate change. Also, some of the methods used to manage cities so far must change, because cities emit more than 70% of the greenhouse gases in cities. The city of Tehran is also facing some of the devastating effects of climate change such as land subsidence, rising air pollutants, severe storms, dust, and shortage of water resources, with their associated problems exacerbated over the past two decades. Urban development plans play an important role in mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change. In this research, using the content analysis method, 6 criteria and 31 indicators have been used to evaluate 8 development plans of Tehran in terms of climate change effects. Three-point coding was used to score each of the indicators. The results show that the development plans of Tehran during the last two decades have made relative progress in terms of reflecting the effects of climate change and strategies to deal with them. Findings indicate that among the studied plans, the second and third five-year development plans of Tehran with 58.06% and 56.45% respectively have the highest rates, and the plan of reducing air pollution in Tehran and the comprehensive plan of Tehran with 17.74% and 19.35%, have the least attention to the effects of climate change.

Keywords

• urban development plans
• climate change
• adaptation and mitigation policies
• tehran metropolis