"Tehran", City of Non-Spaces

Abstract

Urban public spaces are one of the fundamental elements in the structures of cities and these spaces play an important role in the social life of communities, and one aspect of social life is social values, so there is a relationship between public spaces and social capital of communities. This paper assesses the relationship between neighbourhood public spaces and social capital of one community. In doing so it investigates two neighbourhoods of Tehran, Iran's capital and an example of a rapidly urbanising city, both with the same inhabitant period to eliminate its effect on the results – one of them with a variety of public spaces and one without. At the same time, it investigates social capital in both neighbourhoods according to residents’ points of view. Because of the nature of this research a mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative methods) was chosen, and residents’ perspectives were obtained through interviews, observations, and questionnaires. The results show that in the neighbourhood with public urban spaces social values are stronger, but most of Tehran’s neighbourhoods suffer from this shortage. Finally, this paper provides a map of Tehran’s neighbourhoods to show their condition regarding the presence of such spaces. The results indicate that most neighbourhoods in Tehran lack these fundamentals as a basis for community formation.