Urban Management
Gholamreza Kazemian; Hosein Aslipour; Arash Taqipour Akhtari
Abstract
Highlights
- Realization of urban construction as a social construct forms a knowledge stock to mine theoretical concepts and develops the goodness of urban building governance at the same time.
- One of the most important categories in the identification and comprehension of actors’ behavior ...
Read More
Highlights
- Realization of urban construction as a social construct forms a knowledge stock to mine theoretical concepts and develops the goodness of urban building governance at the same time.
- One of the most important categories in the identification and comprehension of actors’ behavior and expectations in the field of Tehran’s construction management in the context of the truth revealed in the study of everyday social life is the distinction between land developers as industrial investors (those whose capitals come mainly from built spaces) and land developers as commercial investors (those whose main capitals involve cash and who move between different markets to earn profit), along with the diverse role of real-estate agents as appraisers or marketers.
- A categorized, cyclical statement of assumptions about urban construction management is provided between the three principles of urban management, built environment, and land developers.
Introduction
According to the citizens, it is years that the urban physical space of Tehran has been characterized by uneven growth and increasing injustice, and its spatial development management is also described as inefficient by various experts. Urban construction is the act of creating a physical space to advance urban functions, and the city’s spatial organization is formed in solidarity with its continuity. Thus, management of the spatial-physical development of the city is a mission pursued by urban management, and the existence of an efficient, effective urban management, as a government infrastructure and an executive attempt to realize good governance and then sustainable urban development is a matter of consensus. By accepting the spatial inefficiencies in Tehran’s urban development and rejecting the gap between content and form, this research introduces its problem as an explanation and interpretation of how Tehran’s urban construction management system functions.
Theoretical Framework
Construction is always a different experience and creates a heterogeneous good. The literature review also demonstrates that each research has described urban construction from its own theoretical-philosophical perspective and background. In fact, the variety of theoretical approaches to urban construction held by political philosophies is accompanied by a unique resultant of the actuals at any time. Therefore, construction is introduced sometimes as the agent of meeting expectations and sometimes as the cause of the current conditions. This gives construction the status of a social construct. Due to the historical dependence of actualized behaviors on the institutional context and variation in functions, one should refer to the conceptual roots of the phenomenon to study the evolutionary path thereof, focusing on the dynamic, unbalanced behavior of social systems.
Therefore, an aspect of truth used to explain such a phenomenon that is created, lived, and understood by citizens is the spaces of representation or the part where the land developers (constructors) live the urban construction management system. That is, it is not the same as what the authorities assign to the construction through administrative instructions, nor as how the experts describe the urban construction management system. Rather, it is by being immersed in the path of building and functioning as a land developer that the unique spatiality of every society can be justified.
Methodology
Since urban construction management is recognized as a multiple, dynamic unit (mutual, continuous influence of constituent dimensions), abduction of the lived experiences of the active land developers requires immersion in data, which are collected through adoption of an intersubjective, empathic approach. Therefore, the strategy of this qualitive research is phenomenological, categorized under the interpretive paradigm. The research population consists of Tehran’s land developers who were selected using purposive sampling. Finally, eight in-depth interviews were conducted. Thus, the researchers clustered and finally combined the lived experiences to achieve a rich description while observing Epoché’s principles throughout the research. It should be mentioned that the thematic analysis technique was used for horizontalization, clustering, and classification of data.
Results and Discussion
As a result of the conducted interviews, transcriptions, and extracted concepts, 67 basic themes were identified in the first step after several rounds of editing. Then, the themes were classified under 17 organizing themes. In fact, an attempt was made at this stage to cluster the intersection of the basic themes, which was realized through movements back and forth between the holistic and detailed approaches and immersion in the data. The process was repeated to form global themes, and four were finally distinguished, including the basic assumptions regarding Tehran urban construction, land developers’ enabling factors, the inefficiencies imposed by the construction management system, and various stakeholders’ roles in the urban construction of Tehran and its consequences.
Conclusion
The findings of this study demonstrated that Tehran’s construction management system is based on different actors’ cooperation to transform space into financial value, according to land developers’ lived experiences. Although there are actors here who link this financial value to the use value due to their natural need, their expertise, or the functional nature of the space, their influence is generally limited to setting minimums. Therefore, these actors do not have a high power with respect to others to influence the production of spaces. Finally, the urban construction management system of Tehran can be explained and interpreted as the system sought to stabilize its position and apply authority to obtain its required income by developing the physical urban environment to carry on missions whose violation would have political costs or legal consequences. Moreover, these measures are taken based on inefficient processes and contents, relying on constructors’ assets and skills at the cost of commodifying urban spaces.
Acknowledgment
This article is taken from the third author's master's dissertation on urban management, entitled "Explaining the Tehran’s Building Governance" and to the first author's supervisor and the second author's advisor at Allameh Tabataba'i Univsersity.
Urban Planning
Najma Esmailpoor; Zahra Heravi; Elham Heidari Hamane
Abstract
The growing trend in illegal construction of residential buildings is a problem that has impacted the urban planning and management system in Iran in the past few decades. Violation of urban planning and technical regulations is a fact that has existed long. Despite the penalties that have been considered ...
Read More
The growing trend in illegal construction of residential buildings is a problem that has impacted the urban planning and management system in Iran in the past few decades. Violation of urban planning and technical regulations is a fact that has existed long. Despite the penalties that have been considered for infractions in construction, the phenomenon has been observed extensively in the city of Yazd, including the territory of Municipal District 3. For prevention of infractions in construction, it is necessary to study the nature and causes of the issue from different aspects. This is an applied survey with a descriptive, causal, and correlational methodology. The factor analysis technic was used for decreasing the large number of factors affecting the commitment of infractions in construction around cities. The research population was divided into two groups: a sample of size 161 of the municipality visitors over 20 years of age and all the expert officials of the municipality. The main purpose of the research was to organize, systematize, and regularize residential construction practices, and the operational objectives were to identify the major causes of infractions in the field of residential construction and to propose appropriate solutions for their reduction in the target municipality. The study involved an investigation of the relationship between the increase in the construction infractions committed by the citizens and three factors including the attitude of the municipality toward infractions as a source of revenue, inefficient monitoring of construction practices on the part of the municipality, and the bureaucracy dominant in the municipality issuing construction permits. Based on the findings from 12884 cases of infraction in construction committed within the territory under investigation between 1991 and 2016, 60% of the infractions concerned construction practices without permits, and 40% pertained to ones where the permit contents had been violated. The most frequent issued sentences involved demolition and penalization along with reconstruction in some cases. The following conclusions were made based on the obtained results. 1- Six major factors that account for about 60% of the tendency to commit infractions in residential construction practices within Municipal District 3 of Yazd include insufficient documentation, poor instruction plans, permit applicants’ incomplete knowledge of the construction regulations, bureaucracy, and violation of the decisions made by the municipality and poor monitoring. 2- The visitors’ opinion on the causes of infractions is not exactly the same as the experts’. 3- Being the committers of the infractions, the visitors regard the above items as the major causes, in that order. The experts, however, consider the following items: the high costs of obtaining construction permits and completion certificates, constructors’ unwillingness to obtain permits, long process of permit issuance, lack of correspondence between constructors’ authorities and responsibilities, low enforceability of the Article No. 100 Commission decisions, dependency of the municipal budget on the revenue from infractions, poor monitoring of construction practices, and limited sustainable financial resources for the municipality. 4- There is a relatively high correlation between the commitment of infractions in construction and the three factors of the attitude of the municipality toward infractions as a source of revenue, inefficient monitoring of residential construction practices on the part of the municipality, and the bureaucracy dominant in the municipality in the process of issuing construction permits. Therefore, it can help decrease infractions in construction within the territory of Municipal District 3 to enhance public awareness of urban construction regulations, lower the cost of issuing construction permits and simplify the procedure, provide sustainable sources of revenue, enhance the construction monitoring system of the municipality, and improve the relevant bureaucracy in the municipality.
