Capturing planning: Politics of land based accumulation in Tehran

This paper contributes to the literature on the relationships between the state and other actors around the politics of the extraction of value from urban developments by focusing on one planning institution in the Tehran metropolitan area, the Tehran Point 5 Committee (TPC). Drawing from studies on state capture, the paper shows how this planning institution, initially established to make spatial plans flexible and implementable through deliberating on zoning relief requests, has been captured by strong political actors and their networks of front companies. By collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data on the decisions of this institution from 2009 to 2019 and the corresponding spatial pattern of the projects with granted zoning relief, I examine how these actors cluster around the TPC to shape, expand, and exploit opportunities from urban development to their benefit while harming the public good. I argue that the explanatory frameworks of neoliberalism, elite informality, and corruption fail to adequately account for the political drivers that undergird the operation of this institution. The paper draws attention to the susceptibility of the planning systems, in particular those components with discretionary powers, to be a target of state capture under circumstances of political distortions, due to the role they can play in extracting and distributing significant economic returns from urban development.