The Process of Urban Water Consumption in Tehran: Presenting the Grounded Theory

This study surveys the semantic impacts of the spatial transformation of the Tehran city's water infrastructure in the recent decades. After governments modernization plans in the last century –including dams' construction, transferring water to the towns, and supplying it through plumbing to the houses- there were transformations and alterations in the urban space construction, the interiors of the homes, social relations between citizens. Following them, rapid changes in the water-related beliefs, values, and actions happened. Based on the classic method of Grounded Theory, the data of this study collected through in-depth individual and group interviews. According to this method, the collected data was coded in 3 phases (open, optional, and theoretical), and the relations between the categories were surveyed in an analytical model until the emergence of a theory based on limited reality. In this process, 8 general categories, including structural changes and technological development, Adiaphorization, mass production and luxury consumption, changing health values, transforming water-related values, house as a whole, individualization/ privatization, consumeristic supervision, and the main category entitled "process of consumption" was obtained. The last one shows the relations between all of the involved phenomena in this issue. The process mentioned above expresses the changes in the water-related values, beliefs, and actions of Tehranians and the increasing expansion of urban consumption.