“Creative Destruction” as a Political Apparatus in Tabriz’s Urban Revitalization Programs: Shahid Beheshti Square Since the 1990s

2023-1-20
Asadmosaffar, Samira
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The primary aim of this research is to examine the urban revitalization scenario of the Shahid Beheshti Square in the historical center of Tabriz City after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Regarding Iran's post-revolution and post-war (Iran-Iraq war) eras, in the 1990s, after a decade of state ownership, the government started liberalizing and privatizing its economic structure. Parallel to the state's political-economic regulations, the city core's historical and cultural potential generated a profit-making ground for multiple destructions and rebuilding phases. This study framed the cycle in the Beheshti Square scope under the umbrella concept of "creative destruction" as renewal plans (the 1990s and 2020s), which signifies the temporality of the urban revitalization project. Hybrid Neoliberalism and Islamic Iranian representation are the conditions that formed the meanings behind "creative destruction" as a political apparatus in the Tabriz urban revitalization program. While the local administration erased the entire historical urban fabric, which led to the demolition of multiple courtyard houses and provided a tabula rasa for constructing modern commercial blocks and a tower, they maintained the Karim Khan mosque as a representation of heritage Iranian Islamic architecture. Shahid Beheshti Square emerged as a modern reinterpretation of old squares of Tabriz and was filled with symbolic architectural elements such as the vast carpet-patterned pavement and the addition of minarets to Karim Khan mosque (as a stronger representation of Islamic ideology). That is, creative destruction exploits historical urban fabric to commercialize local cultural values, create a tourism center, and acquire a global Islamic city image. Yet, the finished project failed to make any social or financial progress, and after a short time, the revitalization project produce a problematic public space that required a second phase of urban renewal.
Creative Destruction, Historical Urban Fabric, Hybrid Neoliberalism, Urban Revitalization, Shahid Beheshti Square, Tabriz
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102767
Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats
S. Asadmosaffar, ““Creative Destruction” as a Political Apparatus in Tabriz’s Urban Revitalization Programs: Shahid Beheshti Square Since the 1990s,” M.Arch. - Master of Architecture, Middle East Technical University, 2023.
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