Speaker
Description
Extended Abstract
Introduction and Research Problem
Urban regeneration is often presented as a necessary response to physical deterioration, inadequate housing conditions, declining neighbourhood environments, and the need to improve urban infrastructure. In many regeneration policies, however, neighbourhoods are primarily understood through physical and economic indicators, such as building condition, parcel size and value, infrastructure deficiencies, land value, density, and redevelopment potential. While these indicators are important, they do not necessarily explain how people experience their homes and neighbourhoods in everyday life.
For low-income households, housing is rarely only a physical structure or a parcel of land. A house may simultaneously be a place of residence, a family asset, a workplace, a source of security, a space of care, and a repository of memories and social relationships. Consequently, an intervention that appears beneficial from a physical or economic perspective may produce new forms of uncertainty for residents: uncertainty about where they will live, whether they can afford to remain, whether their livelihoods can continue, whether social relationships will survive, and whether they will be able to return after redevelopment.
This issue becomes particularly important in neighbourhoods labelled as deteriorated or dysfunctional fabrics, where regeneration is frequently justified by the need for physical transformation. The question, therefore, is not simply whether regeneration is necessary, but what needs to be understood before anything is changed. This research examines this question through the lived experiences of residents in one lane in Falah neighbourhood, District 17 of Tehran. It asks: How are housing and the prospect of urban regeneration experienced in everyday life, and what can residents’ narratives reveal about planning and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty?
Rather than treating residents’ experiences as supplementary information to conventional planning knowledge, the research considers them a source of knowledge through which the meaning and consequences of regeneration can be reconsidered.
Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
The study is informed by approaches that understand housing as more than a physical commodity and planning as a process shaped by multiple forms of knowledge, experience, and negotiation. Housing is connected to identity, security, social relationships, everyday practices, and the ability to sustain a particular way of life. From this perspective, the meaning and value of a house cannot be fully understood through its physical characteristics or market value alone.
The research also draws on critical and collaborative approaches to planning that question whose knowledge becomes visible in planning processes. These approaches highlight forms of urban knowledge that are often overlooked by formal planning systems and emphasise the importance of experiences and knowledge emerging from diverse urban contexts. They also stress dialogue and the inclusion of different forms of knowledge in shaping urban decisions.
Narrative inquiry provides the main analytical perspective of the study. Narratives are not treated simply as personal stories or illustrations of predetermined planning problems, but as ways through which people interpret their experiences and make sense of changes in their homes and neighbourhoods. Narrative inquiry is particularly useful for examining the connections between experience, place, memory, and change.
Within this framework, uncertainty is understood not only as a lack of information about the future, but also as something that can be produced through planning decisions. Regeneration may reduce physical risks while simultaneously increasing uncertainty about tenure, affordability, livelihoods, social networks, and the possibility of remaining in place. The study therefore shifts attention from uncertainty as a technical problem to uncertainty as an everyday lived experience.
Methods
The research follows an interpretive-constructivist paradigm and adopts a qualitative narrative research strategy. The empirical focus is one lane in Falah neighbourhood, District 17, Tehran, a residential environment situated within the broader context of deteriorated urban fabric.
The research reconstructs and analyses 18 narrative-interpretive stories developed through narrative interviews and conversations, observations, oral histories of families and neighbours, and the researcher’s long-term lived familiarity with the neighbourhood. This familiarity provides an additional perspective for understanding everyday practices, relationships, and spatial changes that may remain invisible in conventional surveys or physical assessments.
The analysis was conducted at two interconnected levels. First, an intra-narrative reading was used to understand each story within its own context, including relationships between residents, houses, everyday practices, and experiences of change. Second, an inter-narrative analysis brought the stories together to identify recurring patterns and differences across households.
The purpose was not to produce a statistically representative picture of the neighbourhood. Instead, the research sought to understand how apparently similar physical conditions may have different meanings for different residents, and how these meanings can inform planning and regeneration decisions under conditions of uncertainty.
Findings
The narratives demonstrate that physical deterioration does not have a single meaning in residents’ everyday lives. A small or physically inadequate house may simultaneously function as a home, an economic resource, a workplace, a place of family memory, and a form of security. Consequently, replacing a building does not necessarily mean improving every dimension of housing.
The stories reveal several interconnected forms of uncertainty associated with regeneration. Residents may experience anxiety in relation to redevelopment, parcel consolidation, demolition, or changes to the existing neighbourhood structure. This uncertainty extends beyond the physical future of the building. It concerns whether residents can remain in the neighbourhood, whether they can afford a new dwelling, what happens to home-based economic activities, whether social relationships will survive, and whether residents will have a meaningful role in decisions affecting their homes.
At the same time, the narratives show that not every problem requires a large-scale intervention. Some everyday housing problems can be addressed through relatively small and locally specific changes. In one case, a minor modification to a house entrance could improve access for a resident’s everyday economic activity. In another, a small repair could improve sanitary conditions without requiring demolition or displacement. These cases challenge the assumption that regeneration necessarily means rebuilding and suggest that the scale of intervention should correspond to the scale and nature of the problem.
The inter-narrative analysis generated three interconnected concepts: the capability to remain with dignity, the hidden costs of cheap housing, and the cycle of cumulative deterioration.
First, the capability to remain with dignity highlights that remaining in place is not simply a question of physical residence. It involves maintaining livelihoods, social relationships, autonomy, and everyday routines without being exposed to unacceptable housing conditions or displacement pressures.
Second, the hidden costs of cheap housing demonstrate that affordability cannot be reduced to rent or purchase price. A dwelling may appear inexpensive while imposing other costs through poor physical conditions, inadequate infrastructure, limited space, insecure tenure, or the loss of opportunities for home-based livelihoods.
Third, the cycle of cumulative deterioration shows how multiple small physical, economic, and social problems can accumulate over time. When these interconnected conditions are viewed only through isolated physical indicators, the everyday mechanisms through which deterioration is experienced may remain invisible.
Together, these findings suggest that regeneration should be evaluated not only by the physical conditions it improves, but also by the forms of uncertainty it reduces or creates.
Discussion and Conclusion
The findings suggest that urban regeneration in low-income neighbourhoods requires a shift from a predominantly parcel-centred understanding of deterioration towards a more everyday and resident-centred understanding of housing.
This does not mean rejecting regeneration or assuming that existing conditions should always remain unchanged. Physical deterioration can create genuine risks, and new construction can provide important improvements. The central issue is instead what becomes visible before intervention and what remains invisible.
A regeneration policy that begins with the physical condition of buildings may identify where intervention is needed, but it may not reveal what residents risk losing through that intervention. The research therefore proposes that the first question of regeneration should not always be “What should be rebuilt?” but rather: “What is happening in these homes, and what must be understood before anything is changed?”
The study contributes to planning research by showing how regeneration-related uncertainty is experienced not only as uncertainty about future development, but as uncertainty about the continuity of everyday life, livelihoods, social relationships, and the capacity to remain in place.
It also highlights the value of small, reversible, and locally grounded interventions when they correspond to residents’ actual needs. In some circumstances, listening, observing, and delaying an irreversible intervention may be more useful than immediately initiating a large redevelopment project.
Urban regeneration, from this perspective, should be understood not simply as changing deteriorated buildings, but as intervening in existing ways of living. Its success should consequently be considered in relation to whether it reduces everyday uncertainty, protects residents’ capacities to act, and enables them to remain with dignity when remaining in place is what they value.
The study ultimately suggests that, in uncertain urban contexts, good planning may require not only knowing where and how to intervene, but also when to listen first, when to make a small change, and when not to disturb what is still working in people’s lives.
Keywords
Urban regeneration; lived experience; housing; everyday uncertainty; narrative inquiry
References
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