A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of land developer in Tehran's Building Management System

According to the citizens, it is years that the urban physical space of Tehran has been characterized by uneven growth and increasing injustice, and its spatial development management is also described as inefficient by various experts. Urban construction is the act of creating a physical space to advance urban functions, and the city’s spatial organization is formed in solidarity with its continuity. Thus, management of the spatial-physical development of the city is a mission pursued by urban management, and the existence of an efficient, effective urban management, as a government infrastructure and an executive attempt to realize good governance and then sustainable urban development is a matter of consensus. By accepting the spatial inefficiencies in Tehran’s urban development and rejecting the gap between content and form, this research introduces its problem as an explanation and interpretation of how Tehran’s urban construction management system functions.

Theoretical Framework:

Construction is always a different experience and creates a heterogeneous good. The literature review also demonstrates that each research has described urban construction from its own theoretical-philosophical perspective and background. In fact, the variety of theoretical approaches to urban construction held by political philosophies is accompanied by a unique resultant of the actuals at any time. Therefore, construction is introduced sometimes as the agent of meeting expectations and sometimes as the cause of the current conditions. This gives construction the status of a social construct. Due to the historical dependence of actualized behaviors on the institutional context and variation in functions, one should refer to the conceptual roots of the phenomenon to study the evolutionary path thereof, focusing on the dynamic, unbalanced behavior of social systems.Therefore, an aspect of truth used to explain such a phenomenon that is created, lived, and understood by citizens is the spaces of representation or the part where the land developers (constructors) live the urban construction management system. That is, it is not the same as what the authorities assign to the construction through administrative instructions, nor as how the experts describe the urban construction management system. Rather, it is by being immersed in the path of building and functioning as a land developer that the unique spatiality of every society can be justified.

Since urban construction management is recognized as a multiple, dynamic unit (mutual, continuous influence of constituent dimensions), abduction of the lived experiences of the active land developers requires immersion in data, which are collected through adoption of an intersubjective, empathic approach. Therefore, the strategy of this qualitive research is phenomenological, categorized under the interpretive paradigm. The research population consists of Tehran’s land developers who were selected using purposive sampling. Finally, eight in-depth interviews were conducted. Thus, the researchers clustered and finally combined the lived experiences to achieve a rich description while observing Epoché’s principles throughout the research. It should be mentioned that the thematic analysis technique was used for horizontalization, clustering, and classification of data.

As a result of the conducted interviews, transcriptions, and extracted concepts, 67 basic themes were identified in the first step after several rounds of editing. Then, the themes were classified under 17 organizing themes. In fact, an attempt was made at this stage to cluster the intersection of the basic themes, which was realized through movements back and forth between the holistic and detailed approaches and immersion in the data. The process was repeated to form global themes, and four were finally distinguished, including the basic assumptions regarding Tehran urban construction, land developers’ enabling factors, the inefficiencies imposed by the construction management system, and various stakeholders’ roles in the urban construction of Tehran and its consequences.

The findings of this study demonstrated that Tehran’s construction management system is based on different actors’ cooperation to transform space into financial value, according to land developers’ lived experiences. Although there are actors here who link this financial value to the use value due to their natural need, their expertise, or the functional nature of the space, their influence is generally limited to setting minimums. Therefore, these actors do not have a high power with respect to others to influence the production of spaces. Finally, the urban construction management system of Tehran can be explained and interpreted as the system sought to stabilize its position and apply authority to obtain its required income by developing the physical urban environment to carry on missions whose violation would have political costs or legal consequences. Moreover, these measures are taken based on inefficient processes and contents, relying on constructors’ assets and skills at the cost of commodifying urban spaces.