The Role of Urban Boundaries in Controlling and Guiding Urban Development of Tehran

Rapid urbanization has caused different problems such as irregular physical growth of cities, emerging various forms of huge settlements resulted from urban sprawl, and expanding developments on valuable, but vulnerable, lands and areas prone to develop. Among these, urban sprawl is one of the most important metropolitan problems. It means irregular spatial growth resulted from moving and distributing activities and population from central city towards suburbs. Urban sprawl often occurs on the lands out of the municipalities’ boundaries, where the authorities’ control is weak and, therefore, is prone to expanding developments. Thus, different strategies, including Infill Development, Smart Growth, Growth Management (GM), Urban Containment Policy (UCP) and Satellite Town, have been considered to cope with these problems. Specifying urban boundaries is a tool of growth management and urban containment policy which is used to prevent unplanned physical growth, which in turn, results in destruction of environment and damaging open spaces and vulnerable lands. This study aims to analyze the role of urban boundaries (named Mahdoode and Harim in Iran legislation and development literature) in controlling and guiding urban development of Tehran. The first question of this study focuses on the importance of urban boundaries in controlling urban development based on the relevant literature review and experiences of different countries in using this tool under various titles such as Green Belt, Urban Service District, Urban Service Area Boundary, Urban Service Line, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, Restricted Development Zone and so on. The second question addresses the evaluation of the performance of city boundaries, Mahdoode and Harim, in guiding Tehran development. To do this, four areas of study, including the functions, planning, governance and legislation of urban boundaries have been considered. With respect to the importance of the role of urban boundaries in the theory and practice of urban development and, also, the few available research concentrated on this subject, at least in Iran, the present study is regarded as an introduction of future studies on urban boundaries in Iran. Desk study, secondary and content analysis, and other relevant methods have been used to gather and analyze information in this research. The main findings of the research show that the urban development management system of the city of Tehran has used green belt to prevent unplanned and unwilling urban physical growth, as well as urban boundaries, i.e. Mahdoode and Harim, to control and guide the amount and direction of the urban development. However, due to effects of other elements out of the control of Tehran management system, it has not been able to achieve all of its objectives. Nevertheless, these boundaries have been relatively effective to control and guide urban development in the city of Tehran.