Kian Tajbaksh presenting on October 4th.
This week, Kian Tajbaksh, a visiting professor of Urban Planning, gave a LiPS lecture titled, “The Struggle over Local Democracy in Iran: Hopes, Realities and Disappointments.” His talk centered around questions of why the intuitional framework of local government is important for planners and how do different types of intuitional design make a difference for planning outcomes. To answer why we should care about local government as planners, Tajbaksh explained how the intergovernmental structure impacts what urban planning and urban planners are able to do. Examples of this include land use, environmental planning, and economic development with particular attention to the needs of the locality. In addition to these, Tajbaksh pointed out that it is the intergovernmental structure that allows or prevents a city from engaging in the ambitious goal of determining its urban future.
Traditionally, it the formal local government has been the only actor for planning. However, in recent years that has been broadened to embrace civil society and the private sector. The Habitat III conference has pointed out that government structure is key to implementation of any plan and that participatory planning is now also part of the global agenda. This shift in ideology also creates a tension between expert-driven, top-down planning, where appointed officials are responsible to those above and bottom-down participatory planning, where officials are responsible to the people. However, it is the government that will give the framework in which groups will operate. Tajbaksh evokes the ideas of Tocqueville as he notes that town institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to knowledge; they allow people to grasp and understand it. It creates a higher value for citizenship.
As a case study, Takbaksh used planning in the city of Tehran to highlight some tensions between local and national governments. As Iran experimented with local democracy and created or strengthened democratic institutions, numerous city organizations were created and local governments were now filled with elected officials, as opposed to the appointed ones from before. However, their mandate was limited, often to just building roads. Importantly, as Tajbaksh notes, they were not able to raise sufficient funds for themselves. In fact, their source of income was property tax, which they were not allowed to raised over 5%. This pushed the local government of Tehran to sell density rights to developers, who would build high-rise buildings in an earthquake-prone area. Tajbaksh argues that if the city were given more autonomy in expenditure, the situation of irregularly spaces high-rises in an earthquake-prone city would not occur. However, as Iran continues to experiment with local democracy and autonomy, these tensions between local and nation governmental organizations will continue to play out.
Submitted by: Faraz Butte, First Year UP Student
