Development eastward as a solution offered by the urban management of Mashhad to relocate the Holy Shrine to the center?!

The development of the city of Mashhad in terms of shape and geography has been northwestward for various reasons. Currently, the city has a northwest-southeast extension. In recent years, the authorities in charge of the city management of Mashhad, for known and unknown reasons, have attempted to impose the development of the city towards the east. Among the reasons mentioned for this big decision in the city’s spatial organization is relocating the shrine from the center to the margin of the city. Based on the concept of centrality, this paper attempts to critique the approach of Mashhad’s urban management in making such metropolitan decisions and explain how the lack of technical perspective adopted by the managers in understanding the concept of “center”, has reduced this concept to a simple matter such as “being in the middle” in the city. With the city’s development towards the southeast, relocating the Holy Shrine to the center (middle) of the city has been the authorities’ intention. However, the “center” has a mental and abstract concept beyond its place in the organization of the city space. The opportunity created by this urban management approach can promote justice in its various dimensions, such as spatial justice and economic justice, and bring attention to marginal areas. Nonetheless, any planning, design, or intervention on the scale of the city requires specialized investigations and a holistic view of the city. Otherwise, it will be doomed to failure, so it will have no result other than wasting resources.