Islamic City between Veiling and Piety: theological discourse conflicts in contemporary Urban Planning in Iran

after epistemological collapse of rational-technocratic planning which resulted in professional collapse, urban planning theory have got new capacity to study the sociological urban changes and analyze the influence of different discourses on constructing urban spaces. Based on this postmodern understanding of urban planning as a main product of historical challenges in “theology-gender” field of contemporary Iran, urban space seems to be the ground of conflicts between two forces: feminine social force VS theology of gender governance.

after literature review of planning theory evolution in past decades, this paper is going to study Ne’matollah Fazeli’s theory of “feminization of city” in the context of theological discourses of governing gender urban spaces, after Islamic revolution 1979.  

from the perspective of theology of urban planning, it looks that we should segregate between two different discourses in revolution: Veiling and Piety; the former traditional discourse willing to hold women at home out of masculine public sphere while the latter, revolutionary discourse advocates of women political participation in a respectful, cleaned from sexual harassments.

Iranian urban space from a gender sensitive view is construction of contestation between these two discourses of veiling VS piety, embedded by two different forces of feminization of urban spaces and patriarchal reaction. A prominent example is the Holy Shrine in Mashhad which includes two opposite spaces: in the new build hall of “Imam Khomeini Ravaagh” we confront an unsegregated space of male and female attendance, while the old part of Holy Shrine is the chambers assigned for men, making walls to veil women from the main part.