From Grand Bazaar to the Sprawl of Shopping malls in Tehran
Focusing on the transformation of Tehran, from the perspective of the expansion of mercantile zones, brings attention to both Grand Bazaar and Shopping malls. Bazaar has been the backbone of Tehran’s urban structure, while it has also been the center for social and cultural interactions. On the other hand, shopping mall is the phenomenon of the contemporary urban leisure; shopping mall is the dream world of the consumer.
Bazaar is one of the main structures in the spatial organization of Iranian traditional city; defining the main body of it. In many of these cities, transportation roots are established according to the location of ‘Bazaar’s main Rasteh’; and Bazaar is integrated into the main layout of traditional Iranian city (Pourjafar et al., 2013). Bazaar is a structured social space inherited from the pre-capitalist Iranian City. It is usually formed in a linear axis upon which public and socio- cultural spaces are arrayed. In other words, Bazaar used to be the linear distributor of culture and status while generating the urban pattern. In the social and economic context, as Ashraf (1989) argues, merchants stood on top of the social groups in Bazaar; they impacted the traditional society highly, regarding their religious tendencies and economic support of religious leaders.
By the 1930s and 1940s, a number of commercial zones appeared along the new streets, creating shopping sub-centers. These centers challenged the vitality of bazaar (Amirhamadi & Kianfar, 1993). This was the beginning of the time of de-monopolization of Bazaar. Due to transformation of the city into a more modernized and facilitated urban setting, culture eventually started to transform.