Land ownership and construction of informal settlements in Iran (1978-2021)

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact that Land Ownership Laws have had on the appearance and taking shape of informal settlements. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, laws were enacted that, fueled the expansion of the informal land and housing market through confiscation and expropriation of some urban lands, and by creating uncertainty and ambiguity about the ownership and legal entitlement to Waqf (charitable endowment or bequest for public benefit) land and waste lands. With the start of the Iran – Iraq war in 1980 and the necessity of resettling the displaced people, under the influence of the revolutionary slogans of support for the disadvantaged and the dispossessed coinciding with changes in the laws pertaining to the ownership of land and housing, this informal market grew ever more. In the following decades, with the changes in economic policies and the removal of low-income people from the urban planning system and the lack of access of low-income groups to housing, these informal settlements increased in such a way that by 2015, about 11 million people were living in areas occupying 62 thousand hectares of land. This research is conducted following historical-adaptive methodologies presenting a mixed empirical/secondary literature review design, where three settlements of Nasimshahr (Akbarabad), Shahrquds and Khak Sefid neighborhood are compared. The findings show that these settlements are formed as a result of demand for housing amongst the lower income groups of the population, taking advantage of the uncertainties and ambiguities within land and property laws. Although informal settlements allow their residents to benefit from the economic and social advantages of informality in the beginning, as these settlements shift towards official markets and as the pressure from new settlers increase the original settlers either lose the benefits that living in the informal settlements bring to them or are prevented from upgrading their neighborhoods by the new land and housing ownership laws.