A global scale intervention, A local scale integration

Abstract

“While it is important to identify world cities, it is also important to identify the lack of connectivity. Silences are as interesting as utterances. They tell us much about the process of globalization.” (Short, 2008) Silences refer to the cities whose connectivity is less than that predicted by their population, and they are called Black holes. According to R.Short explanation, Tehran, Baghdad and Pyongyang are among those cities which have an ideological resistance of being connected to the global system because of their religious or politics beliefs. But on the other hand, the economic role of Tehran in Islamic Financial Services (IFS) among the Islamic countries and the geo-political and social role of Tehran in the Middle Eastern countries show us a new aspect of globalization which has never been mentioned in the recent recognized literature. Maybe it is now the time to shift our analysis to the Middle East countries which have been the victim of the hegemonic world city imagination highlighted by Massey (2007). Moreover, Tehran municipality is now at a crossroad in its spatial development. “Making Tehran a Global city” is one of the seven main aims of its last master plan. In this regard, creating a “world trade centre” in Southern part of the city has introduced as an action project contributing in achieving this goal. The problem deal with this project is about the concept and location of the project. The southern part of city of Tehran has faced an uneven development through its growth history. This trend has resulted to an obvious division and polarization between North and South socially and spatially. Consequently, south part of Tehran is now full of left-over post-industrial areas which are like voids among new urbanized parts. The main question of this thesis project is that how can the empty coarse grains of south contribute in creating a balance between the north and south in global scale and its integration to the centre in local scale?