Document Type : Viewpoint/Editorial
Author
Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture, College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Iran
Abstract
In the Ramadan War, the clash of wills between the two fronts Iran and the United States-Israel enters a new phase, and Iran’s cities become a very important part of the arena of this confrontation. Understanding the events of this confrontation, in order to “pass through” them (in Walter Benjamin’s sense), can provide the ground for an existential cultivation that offers a singular opportunity for the comprehensive flourishing of the land. A deep attention to the landscape of the Ramadan War draws our gaze to a particular mode of the distribution of power. In the past, power was imagined to be distributed in a tree‑like form with a single trunk and a top‑down structure. Today, however, we know that power is distributed in a networked form, without a single trunk and accompanied by complex media instruments. In fact, the distribution of power has an overt and compulsory layer, and another layer that operates through consent and remains hidden (hegemony). This second, deeper layer is what makes the first layer possible. Iran’s resistance to the war crimes committed by the American-Israeli enemy on 28 February 2026 and afterward has, in practice, shown that Iran’s cities possess a distribution of power that has both the intensity and the direction required for confrontation. In this regard, the winning card of Iran’s cities, in comparison with the enemy, is not based on the intensity of power but on the direction of its distribution a direction that is fundamentally different from the enemy’s calculations and, consequently, far more capable in confronting it.
The generative direction of power in Iran’s cities emerging from the interactions between the people and their environment has produced a mode of perception whose elements can move along a path that dissolves the hegemony that conceals the master/slave relation of the enemy. This power, which in addition to having religious testimony is also, according to the great Persian poetry, an expression of love (“Servitude and kingship were made clear / Through these two veils, love was concealed” - Rumi). In the Ramadan War, victory belongs to the one who, together with the environment and materiality, transforms hegemony. Since the distribution of power in Iran’s cities is oriented toward freedom and an exit from the master/slave cycle, it generates events those “moments” that have the capacity to shatter the hegemony of dominating power. Although martyrdom and the wounding of the land are heavy burdens, they expose the lie of the benevolence claimed by dominating and enslaving nations, a lie wrapped in networked hegemony (“a beautiful ship!”). And with the collapse of this hegemony, its instruments lose their effectiveness. From a technical standpoint, today it is possible beyond the opaque veil of orthogonal streets and 60/40 buildings to discern the distribution of power in the Iranian city by reflecting deeply on the presence and rhizomatic gathering of the people:
The initiation of population density emerging from the dispersion of alleyways as convergent neighborhoods.
The connection of these dense clusters through passages where the call to freedom is openly expressed.
The merging of these clusters in behavioral plazas shaped by altruism.
The synergy of power within a network of ensembles driven by devotional, social, and functional wills.
The redistribution of the strength generated by this unifying togetherness, in the form of Iran’s will as the spirit of a spiritless world.
This distribution of power unfolds at automobile-oriented asphalt intersections whose one‑dimensional reading is not recognized by the social forces themselves. This opens a pathway to understanding the multidimensional capacities of the city and its relation to power as a means of existential elevation. It is hoped that, in the country’s development, cities can be understood as embodiments of a distribution of power oriented toward freedom, rather than as neutral environments.
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