تحقیقات تاریخ اجتماعی (Sep 2014)
People’s Objections to Urban Renovation in the First Pahlavi Period
Abstract
The first Pahlavi government made a major upheaval in different areas of Iran’s social life, including the developments in the urban life. The first Pahlavi government embarked on changing the cities based on a renovation idea according to Western models. In this renovation, the modern tools such as introduction of automobile had its effect on the urban atmosphere through road making. This means, the most important aspect of urban renovation was seen in establishment of new streets and developing the current ones. However, this aspect of renovation required destruction of people’s houses, which was followed by objections heard by the parliament members. Thus, the present paper studies urban renovation in the 1st Pahlavi period from the perspective of the protesters who submitted their complaint to the National Parliament Council. These complaints are related to three terms of the parliament, namely, the sixth, seventh and eighth terms, which coincides with the first half of the 1st Pahlavi period. The complaints are studied with a descriptive-analytic method relying on other documents and library resources. This paper seeks to find out the reasons for discontent of people about the government’s urban renovation. The question is, did the urban renovation have a suitable executive plan? Given the complaints made about delay in paying the prices, drawing different and sometimes baseless maps and plans, the influences in drawing the maps, lack of preparing the necessary rules, the hypothesis is that the government did not have an appropriate executive plan in its urban development policy. The result shows that the government did not pay enough attention to the psychological damages caused by destruction of homes and occupational damages caused by destruction of tenements.
