کنشگری شهری و بازآفرینی شهری در ایران: از مقاومت‌های بی‌برنامه تا بازتملک سازمان‌یافته فضا

Introduction: Urbanization in Iran between 2001–2021 produced unequal, commodified, and exclusionary urban spaces, intensifying divergences between official planning and the citizens’ lived realities. Institutional centralization, erosion of intermediary institutions, and securitization of public space curtailed avenues for meaningful participation and collective action, marginalizing democratic discourses in urban governance. Within this context, the Right to the City (RTC) reappears not merely as a legal claim but as a contested discursive and spatial project through which inhabitants seek reappropriation, recognition, and everyday presence. This study argues that examining linguistic, institutional, and social registers of urban governance through a discourse analytic lens reveals how structural constraints and media framings constrain or enable urban agency.
The Purpose of the Research: The research aims to investigate the discursive, institutional, and social dimensions of urban activism in Iran, and to assess whether urban agency remains fragmented and symbolic or whether emergent forms of organized spatial reappropriation are discernible. By interrogating state, media, and public discourses, the study seeks to produce a typology of activism that captures variation in tactics, temporalities, and transformative potential within the specific political context of the Global South.
Methodology: Employing a descriptive–analytical design, the study integrates Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis with Henri Lefebvre’s Social Theory of the production of space. The corpus encompasses 206 texts collected purposively from 2001 to 2021 across three domains: 24 official documents and policy texts; 153 media reports and opinion pieces from print and digital outlets; and 29 items of public discourse including social media posts, graffiti, community statements, and visual materials. Data were systematically coded in MAXQDA using an iterative combination of deductive codes derived from theory (e.g., participation, space, right, resistance) and inductive codes emergent from the corpus. Analysis proceeded across three nested levels (textual, discursive practice, and socio-cultural practice) to trace interrelations among language, institutional routines, and social structures.
Findings and Discussion: The analysis uncovers pronounced contrasts among the three discursive fields. State discourse recurrently frames urban space as a managerial object, deploying technicalized, depersonalized language that marginalizes collective subjectivity and redefines participation as awareness-raising. Media discourse often amplifies securitized framings, rendering protests as illegal gatherings or crisis points while minimizing structural causes. Public discourse, by contrast, foregrounds identity, memory, and claims to remain; practices such as graffiti, neighborhood campaigns, and everyday occupations articulate a vernacular RTC. From the empirical material, a threefold typology emerges: 1. symbolic/structured activism (cultural and artistic practices that contest meanings of place); 2. spontaneous/networked activism (ad hoc and digitally mediated mobilizations with limited institutionalization); and 3. collective/organized activism (sustained neighborhood councils, campaigns, and litigations with potential to influence spatial outcomes). While the first two forms predominate, the third illustrates pathways through which distributed resistance may coalesce into organized spatial reappropriation despite institutional constraints. The study also identifies structural enablers (strong social ties; local identity) and barriers (centralization; securitization; commodification) that condition activist trajectories.
Implications and Strategies: Building on empirical findings, the paper proposes four pragmatic strategic orientations to enhance urban justice under prevailing constraints: a. growth strategies that strengthen grassroots networks and capacitate local actors to coordinate repertoire and resources; b. revision strategies aimed at reframing urban policies to embed participatory thresholds, transparency mechanisms and distributive safeguards in redevelopment programs; c. confrontation strategies that mobilize legal, communicative, and associative tactics to contest exclusionary projects and assert communal claims; and d. defensive strategies prioritizing protection of existing community assets (public spaces, small gardens, and informal economies) through temporary moratoria, legal support, and solidarity networks. Given the political context, defensive and growth strategies are highlighted as more feasible short-term measures, whereas revision and confrontation require longer-term institutional openings and alliances. Overall, the study advances a pragmatic, context-sensitive, and operationalizable research agenda.
Conclusion: Urban activism in Iran is shaped by tensions between technocratic governance, security-oriented media narratives, and resilient public practices. Recognizing RTC as a discursive and spatial struggle emphasizes everyday reappropriations rather than formal legal entitlements. Policy implications include institutionalizing meaningful participation channels, protecting community spaces against speculative redevelopment, and supporting intermediary networks that translate dispersed agency into collective capacity. By situating Iran within comparative debates on spatial justice, the study contributes a context-sensitive framework for analyzing urban agency in authoritarian and marketized urban regimes.