Assembling Iran’s Urban Heritage Conservation Policy and Practice: Problematised in Tehran

自19世纪末以来，城市遗产保护作为一个学术和专业领域得到了扩展和转变，在许多国家已经成为城市规划和公共政策制定的重要组成部分。然而，该领域因在应对当代城市发展中出现的问题方面存在不足而受到批评。今天，城市遗产保护研究界呼吁进行案例研究，在当地城市背景下对该领域的主流原则进行问题和诊断。有些国家对文化遗产的现代认识不是从本国文化内部发展起来的，这些国家的案例可以在填补这一空白方面发挥显著作用，伊朗就是这样一个例子。在伊朗，文化遗产保护的学术、行政、法律和公民基础是在20世纪头30年根据欧洲模式形成和组装的。城市遗产保护作为一个学术和专业领域，于20世纪70年代初出现在伊朗。由于伊朗城市遗产保护组织的迅速形成，形成欧洲保护思想的基本概念在长期过程中没有得到处理和调整，以适应伊朗的政治、文化和地理背景。这项研究的最终目的是在德黑兰城市发展的背景下对当前城市遗产保护集合的响应性进行诊断性思考。为实现这一点，首先，将对1970年以来伊朗城市遗产保护组合的关键转型阶段进行解释和绘制地图，其次，将在德黑兰的历史区域内对国家城市遗产保护组合进行背景分析和问题处理。本研究采用定性的研究方法，并嵌入单一案例研究策略。在这里，伊朗的城市遗产保护机制被概念化为一个动态的集合，由相互关联的人类和非人类元素组成。在观察和解释所调查的现象时，采用了遵循人种学研究原则的归纳性、经验性方法。在对收集到的数据进行分类和分析时，将使用主题编码的定性技术。伊朗首都被选为一个独特的案例，在一个现代伊朗特大城市中，城市发展和城市遗产保护之间存在着广泛的挑战和矛盾。这些成果将有助于解决城市遗产保护学术在了解非西方国家，特别是中东国家的城市保护地方机制方面的差距。国际上很少考虑伊朗国家范围内的城市保护政策和做法。这项研究可以提高伊朗城市保护的国际形象，使其得到理解和反思。

Having expanded and transformed as an academic and professional field since the late 19th century, urban heritage conservation has become a significant part of urban planning and public policy-making in many countries. However, the field is criticised for its shortfalls in responding to the problems that have arisen in the face of contemporary urban development. Today, the urban heritage conservation research community calls for case studies that problematise and diagnose the mainstream principles of the field in the local urban contexts. Cases from the countries in which the modern understanding of cultural heritage has not developed from within the native culture can play a remarkable role in filling this gap.Iran is one such example. In Iran, the academic, administrative, legal, and civic foundations of cultural heritage conservation were shaped and assembled, based on the European models, in the first three decades of the 20th century. Urban heritage conservation, as an academic and professional field, appeared in Iran in the early 1970s. Due to the rapid formation of the urban heritage conservation assemblage in Iran, the fundamental concepts that shaped the idea of conservation in Europe were not processed and adapted to the Iranian political, cultural, and geographical context in a long-term process. The ultimate objective of this research is to present a diagnostic reflection on the responsiveness of the current urban heritage conservation assemblage in the context of urban development in Tehran. To achieve this, first, the critical transformation stages of the urban heritage conservation assemblage in Iran since 1970 will be explained and mapped and, second, the national urban heritage conservation assemblage will be contextualised and problematised in Tehran’s historic zone. This research adopts a qualitative approach with an embedded single case study strategy. Here, the urban heritage conservation mechanism in Iran is conceptualised as a dynamic assemblage, composed of inter-connected human and non-human elements. An inductive, empirical approach that follows the principals of ethnographic research in observing and explaining the investigated phenomena is adopted. For categorising and analysing the collected data, the qualitative technique of thematic coding will be used. The capital city of Iran is selected as a unique case, which offers a wide range of challenges and contradictions between urban development and urban heritage conservation in a modern Iranian megacity. The results will contribute to addressing the gap in urban heritage conservation scholarship in understanding local mechanisms of urban conservation in non-western, and in particular, Middle-Eastern countries. The urban conservation policy and practice in the Iranian national context have rarely been considered internationally. This research can raise the international profile of urban conservation in Iran, allowing it to be understood and reflected on.