Historical-Pathological Analysis of Tehran Urban Water Management in the Qajar Period

Urban management, with the aim of thinking and planning on how to improve the current situation of a city and its citizens, tries to represent a good perspective for the future development and progress. Traditional urban water management in the Qajar period, despite its gradual awareness of modern management models on an international scale, was inefficient in developing the water supply networks in Tehran and unable to equip the city's water structures with modern systems. There are fundamental ambiguities about the underdevelopment and the roots of this inefficiency. This article employs an analytical approach and an explanatory-interpretive method in order to pathology the roots of the underdevelopment of urban water management and water structures in Tehran in the Qajar period. The authors tried to answer this question that why the water supply network of Tehran during the Qajar period was not adjusted despite the growing awareness of the government officials about the modern urban water management in other countries. The results showed that the lack of clear laws and structural and administrative interference, as well as the preference of personal interests over public interests, parasitism and "crisis escape" policy when Tehran water problems occured, were serious and fundamental harms that hinder the efficiency of urban water management and development of sustainable water supply networks.