Tears and smiles in the urban protests against local decisions: searching for footprint of power in urban management (Evidence from Tehran)

Abstract

To achieve plural power in the urban planning scene, two distinguished parties, including both official and unofficial, should be able to interact with each other. In the absence of participation in the planning and decision-making processes, protests are a way for unofficial parties to force the government to reconsider their plans. The present research investigates the chain of power in respond to urban protests by analysing two case studies from the City of Tehran. The main research question concerned how city authorities in Tehran responded to the citizens' demands by establishing whether, through powerful organisation of the city, people can change the governance trends of city authorities, or if their demands remain ignored or only slightly slowed down the execution of the plans. This study applied Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) for analysing relations between different players (Citizens, Government, Institutions, Guilds etc.) and illustrating the structure of power in both cases. The input data includes interviews and facts from published newspapers and after calculating data with ISM, MICMAC analysis employed to explain the drive power and dependence power of players. According to the results of interpretive structural modelling, citizens' demands in both cases had only a marginal effect on the governance trends of city authorities. The results also showed that citizens were on the bottom of the power hierarchy to see their demands met.