Assessment of Residential Policy-Making to Encounter Spatial Inequality in Tehran

Residential policy-making is one of the critical subject areas of urban policy-making. Due to the strong social aspect of housing and its tremendous effects on macro- and micro-economy, the provision of housing is within the obligations of the public sector. The public policy-making that ignores housing as a social right, culminates in urban spatial inequality. The housing problem in Tehran, which is both a part of an inclusive national problem and an urban problem of this metropolis, has given rise to spatial inequality. Understanding the impact of urban policies and tracking the causes of the emergence of residential inequality enables policy-making to address and tackle this planning problem. This paper focuses on the process and the content of the influential sectoral and integrated spatial residential policies implemented in Tehran to explore the effects of various policies on spatial inequality.To achieve this purpose, a dual descriptive-analytical path, based on the deductive research strategy, is designed. Utilizing a combined comparative and longitudinal analysis of the housing condition and thematic content analysis of policies in temporal-politically defined periods, and based on the criteria defined in the first section of this article, we explored the spatial inequality in Tehran.Our findings indicate a great distance concerning the agendas of these policies and a manner of policy-making that could effectively encounter inequality as a complex -- though avoidable -- urban problem of Tehran. This paper suggests an approach and framework for residential policy-making that is able enough to deal with the problem of spatial inequality in Tehran in general and especially in its housing structure.