Women and strategic urban planning in Tehran: channeling women’s social capacity to prepare city development strategies

Abstract

City development strategy (CDS) is an urban strategic planning approach that has already been implemented in over 200 cities worldwide. Nevertheless, its preparation process is different from country to country and each socio-economic context has its own conditions in running a CDS project. This article aims at showing how planners could benefit from empowering women and their participation in order to mobilize an urban plan and use their social capacities to raise the community’s awareness about the outcomes of a CDS plan with regard to creating more participatory urban spaces. A qualitative methodology including a questionnaire and focus group tools were used to identify the needs, to prepare vision statements, and to train the women. The results attested to the crucial but concealed role of women, as cores of families, in the progression of the project as well as the importance of their cooperation in incepting and implementing an urban development plan. This paper highlights: (1) Iranian women’s capacities to mobilize urban projects, and (2) the purpose that a CDS process, as is presented in this article, might serve as a proper urban strategic planning framework for Iran’s urban development while engaging women and local groups in such a process and reducing the masculine dominance in physical urban planning.