Reza Mortaheb
Reza Mortaheb
Reza Mortaheb is an architect, urban planner and researcher, with several years of professional experience in town planning, urban design and higher education. Reza holds a master’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from KTH the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Reza was a PhD student in the Urban Systems program and worked as a teaching assistant and instructor at the Hillier College of Architecture and Design. Reza’s research interests revolve around twentieth-century urban and architectural history, housing, smart cities, and spatial analytics. Reza’s PhD dissertation focused on the interconnection of town planning, public health, and housing in an oil company town in Southwest Iran in the early twentieth century.
Building the Petro-polis: Oil Capitalism, Imperialism, and the Making of Abadan, 1908-1933
Abadan is the most prominent of all the oil company towns the British Petroleum Company built in Southwest Iran. Located at the border of Iran and present-day Iraq, by the mid twentieth century Abadan not only accommodated the world’s largest refinery, it had also become Iran’s most populous industrial city. This dissertation focuses on the process of urban development on Abadan Island between 1908 and 1933. Drawing on primary archival documents and secondary sources, discussing how Abadan’s establishment and its changing urban form and spatial organization were the product of broader historical processes. Imperial intelligence and practical requirements of the oil industry helped determine the location of the refinery in 1908. Research shows how urban reformation as well as town planning and design practices implemented between 1924 and 1933 aimed to boost industrial efficiency and prevent labor militancy by increasing the Company’s control over space and populations, while also addressing pressing urban issues, such as housing and public health.
