Tehran in the Path of Transition to a Smart City: Initiatives, Implementation, and Governance

Abstract

The increasing population and urbanism in Tehran as the capital and political-economic center of Iran has brought about several challenges such as environmental pollution, traffic, and reduced quality of life (QoL) in recent years. Deficiencies in the integrated urban monitoring and management system are also aggravating the situation. To deal with such problems, Tehran municipality has made extensive efforts for smartening Tehran with the vision of increasing the citizens’ QoL by providing a healthy living environment, happiness, efficient mobility, integrated urban infrastructure and management, and a vibrant economy. The ultimate goal of smartening Tehran is not merely utilizing the ICT infrastructure, rather the adoption and implementation of six dimensions of “smart economy,” “smart mobility,” “smart environment,” “smart infrastructure,” “smart governance,” and “smart life” at the same time. Furthermore, this chapter describes and analyzes the policies, programs, and measures taken to realize the six dimensions of smartening Tehran. It also presents some key applications of smartening efforts, including combating the prevalence of Covid-19. Additionally, challenges in implementing each aforementioned dimension are explained. This chapter concludes by classifying the challenges of Tehran in the transition to a smart city, and solutions to overcome these challenges are also presented under four categories: governance, citizenship, technological, and economic challenges. Lastly it should be noted despite the substantial efforts and tangible achievements of implementing Smart Tehran, there are relatively critical challenges and shortcomings to this end that call for the cooperation and interaction of all public and private stakeholders to beat them off.