Architecture, Building and Planning

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Transit and urbanity in Tehran

Peimani, Nastaran ( 2017)

A key response to the challenges of car-dependency and urban sprawl has been to build dense, functionally mixed and walkable urban areas around existing and new transit stations – broadly defined as Transit-oriented development (TOD). While the concept of TOD has been extensively researched in Western cities, less formal and more congested cities lack empirical investigation, particularly in the ways TODs work in relation to micro-scale morphology, urbanity, informality and gender issues. This research explores the case study of Tehran to investigate synergies between urban morphology, transport modes and streetlife around five major transit nodes. It examines the ways that different modes of transport variously mesh or compete for the same networks and spaces. The study explores the relations of informal to formal transport and discusses on the prospects for formalisation. It documents the advantages that motorcycles have within this urban assemblage - capacities to slip through congested traffic and narrow streets and between different spatial networks. It also explores the ways that gender-based rules both constrain women's use of public transport and keep the system informal. Using comparative mappings of urban density, functional mix, streetlife, transport access and interfaces, the thesis explores both existing synergies between such properties and possibilities for urban design transformation.