A review of methods of public land ownership and allocation for housing in Iran

In the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, the new administration adopted a number of policies to address the question of land ownership, supply and allocation in order to tackle the acute shortage of housing in the urban areas. In 1982, the Five-Year Urban Land Act was passed by the Parliament. Subsequently a body called the Urban Land Organisation (ULO) was set up to co-ordinate the process of land preparation and allocation. The 1982 Urban Land act empowered the government to: (a) expropriate certain categories of abandoned urban land, and (b) to set a temporary time schedule of five years during which the act's work will be monitored. This paper sets out to examine the policies related to urban land which have been introduced and implemented in the 1980s in Iran.