“Extended Abstract of Tehran Game”
Presenter: Educational and Research Center of Mammute Urban Innovation Studio (MUIS)
Mentor: Sina Ataee
Facilitator: Navid Falahat, Soroush Baghban Ferdows, Seyyed Ali Fazel Hashemi
With the assistance of the Tehran Municipality Administrative Transformation and Renovation Center, the first session of the GLUT game was held in Tehran Municipality in the summer of 2022, in the presence of the managers of “Building Permit Issuance,” “Cultural Vice-Chancellor of Urban Areas,” and “Revenue Department of Urban Areas.” The participants in this interactive experience have learned a lot about the issues of communication, collaboration, coordination, and maximizing the advantages of various interest groups at the same time, as well as about the city problem.
Reviewing their conduct and choices in two crucial game phases, namely the reform and the game’s outcome in the last stage, is sufficient to explain the participants’ activity and examine their role-playing in the game
In reform, by establishing a mandated price and a fixed ceiling for land prices, the players have attempted to control the regulated environment in the real estate and housing markets and exert pressure on the group of landowners. This indicates that they were unable to identify the parameters for securing each other’s interests with each other’s assistance throughout the discussion process or comprehend how protecting their own interests would influence other groups.
Also, the city has shifted to supporting policies and designated half of the municipal income as a cash subsidy for the low-income group, in addition to placing required constraints on the market. This choice also demonstrates the lack of understanding of the problem of conflict of interests between high-income groups, commercial, speculators, and even NGOs. They have essentially rendered the city unable to respond to public needs by placing financial pressure on the city management and cutting municipal revenues in favor of the low-income group. This is because direct financial help affects the market price both as liquidity and as another factor. For the low-income group who could not buy a license plate for their family during the four stages, the volume and amount of this assistance will not be sufficient to meet their demands. In addition, determining the mandated price while ignoring land taxes demonstrates that the actors were less interested in market processes and more interested in top-down government oversight as a means of controlling prices. An event that has been going on for years in Iran’s managerial structure.
The proposal put out by the high-income group is another notable aspect of the reform ideas. The goal of this group was to lower transportation costs. It should be noted that this income group rides and moderate and low-income groups use the public transportation system, in accordance with the basic instructions of the game. While the high-income group pays more for transportation since they live in the suburbs, the expense of direct transportation also has an impact on the number and quality of the city’s public transit system. While the high-income group pays more for transportation since they live in the suburbs, the expense of direct transportation also has an impact on the number and quality of the city’s public transit system. For the middle-class and low-income groups, this implies that the cost of transportation will be lowered both quantitatively and qualitatively, while for the high-income group, it will mean having more money to invest in the real estate and housing markets.
The sum of the aforementioned choices, which predominated the game’s first four stages, can be viewed as the general pattern of selecting actors to design solutions for conflicts and upcoming challenges in the game. Both in terms of analyzing the issue and creating a solution, these choices are excellent choices for management situations. It closely resembles Iran’s genuine urban management structures. The outcome of the game is a testament :to the effects of this managerial thinking
The low-income group is required to provide 21 plates for the city’s inhabitants as well as the rise in homes in the two outlying districts of the city, per the general rules of the game. Meanwhile, this crew could only provide 3 license plates throughout the course of all phases. This indicates that there are currently 18 homeless households in the hypothetical city in addition to the 16 primary households residing in the two marginal zones.
As a result of the middleincome group only providing 14 of the required 18 license plates at the end of the game, the city is still concerned about the issue of multi-family housing. The actors in this group have provided the necessary number (quantity) of license plates to an acceptable level, but the location of these license plates does not have the characteristics that are mentioned as the group’s goal in the hidden agenda. As a result, this group has not been able to achieve its objectives. Also, this group has not only performed poorly in terms of communication and appropriate action with other groups but also in terms of developing the group’s plan.
The commercial group has also supplied five of the nine necessary license plates; therefore, the city is also concerned about the peddling issue.
Additionally, the high-income group was unable to produce all the necessary license plates (providing 10 license plates out of 12 considered).
The final map displays a city that is implicated in numerous issues facing contemporary Iranian metropolises. Poverty, peddling, squatting, sleeping in cardboard boxes, air pollution, dangerous edges, and the economic structure and rules and regulations imposed by city actors are all comprehensive urban challenges and tensions that can be resolved through cooperation, coordination, and companionship with the right understanding of the patterns. However, by applying top-down directives, the actors chosen in this city have been stressing group interests and escalating already-existing tensions and disputes.
According to the theoretical underpinnings of complexity theory, game theory, and the idea of collective action, the specifics of each group’s behavior in this game have been examined, and have been submitted to the Tehran city government in the form of a comprehensive report. The Tehran Municipality requested that twenty-two additional events be held in order to train 750 managers and specialists of the municipality for the professional team of Urban Innovation Studio due to the positive response received from the first period of organizing this innovative event in Tehran.
