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A critical study of urban regeneration and gentrification in Rasht, Iran
Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal,
12
(4),
359-375
(2019)
Abstract
This research study explores the background, rationale and characteristics of recent urban interventions having the aim of regeneration in Rasht, Iran. An introduction to the context-specific factors that play a role in urban changes is followed by a critical focus on finding the possible side effects and consequences of the resultant changes on everyday life of long-time residents of Chellehkhaneh, an old neighbourhood located in Rasht inner city, by way of a qualitative analysis of several in-depth interviews. The narratives about the changing relationship between interviewees and their neighbourhood represent the conflation of person–place emotional tensions with socioeconomic pressures. By observing pressures caused by urban regeneration in the everyday life of long-term residents, sufficient evidence was gathered to prove the existence of an interrelationship between regeneration and the pressures associated with gentrification in the absence of real strategies that could be adopted to control changes and their effects. The chosen reduction of social relations and involvement in social affairs related to the neighbourhood by long-term established residents of Chellehkhaneh as a prevailing behavioural mechanism adopted to tolerate imposed pressures was thus one of the main consequences of changes caused by urban regeneration in Rasht inner city.
Keywords: urban changes; urban regeneration; gentrification; environmental pressures
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Mona Taj Bakhsh is an Urban Scholar and PhD in urban design. She has obtained two master’s degrees, the first in architecture from Tehran University, and the second in urban design from Shahid Beheshti University. She has more than ten years’ experience as a university instructor in addition to gaining practical experience derived by working on architecture and urban design projects. She was previously a member of both the educational affairs committee (four years) and the professional board of architectural advisers (eight years) for the Guilan Construction Engineering Organization (Rasht, Iran). She has made an active contribution to urban studies in the form of several academic articles. Her research interests lie within the field of urban design and focus on issues in urban regeneration.
Jahanshah Pakzad is an Iranian-German researcher and the author of several books in the field of urban studies. He received his master’s and PhD degrees in urban design from Hannover University, Germany. He is Professor Emeritus of urban design at Shahid Beheshti University and was responsible for launching undergraduate degree programmes of study in urbanism for the first time in Iran at several major universities. In addition to having more than 40 years’ professional experience in the field of urban planning and design, he is also a member of several journal editorial boards as well as various professional and academic committees in Iran.
