Iranian Cities. An emerging urban agenda at a time of drastic alterations

In the call for papers for this special issue of I Quaderni di Urbanistica 3, we men - tioned the reconcilement of Iran and the “West” as the latest episode of a chain of events pushing towards a new wave of transformations in the life and spatial structures of Iranian cities. However, now that we are writing the introduction to the issue, heavy shadows are casting over the future of this reconcilement yet adding one more episode to such chain. But if these appear to be just episodes, a deeper set of crucial political and economic transformations in the last five decades have had a direct and significant impact on the material and non-ma - terial dimensions of Iranian urbanization. Shifts in the country’s national urban agenda have come hand and in hand with changes in the behaviour of individu - als, enterprises and the civil society contributing to the shaping of a new field of tensions that urban scholars are just starting to grasp and address.