The Heavy Cost of Free Land

The promise-making machine with 'raw government lands', after multiple failures in quickly converting these seemingly free lands into affordable housing, continues its course. Two decades ago, the idea of '99-year land leases' for housing construction was proposed, and lands outside city limits were distributed among the people under the guise of 'removing land costs from housing prices' in the form of Mehr housing; however, it took years for the initial construction possibilities on them to be realized. Contrary to the designers' expectations, the Mehr housing lands required 'fundamental credit, technical capacity, and a long time for preparation' before construction could begin. Today, both the 20 years of experience in constructing and completing Mehr housing, the dormitory conditions in new cities such as Parand, and the imbalanced progress of the national housing plan serve as three lessons from the reality of 'free land'. When policymakers reduce urban construction to housing production, the result is years of waiting and running around for the completion of raw lands. Currently, the speed of house construction in the national housing plan is at least twice the speed of providing infrastructure for these lands; the reason is that about 97% of the lands allocated to the plan are outside the main city limits and were considered as 99-year raw lands for housing construction through annexation or boundary expansion. These lands, with a cumulative area equivalent to 'one Tehran', require about 3000 trillion tomans at the beginning of this year to complete the preparation and provision of full infrastructure (water, electricity, and gas) and also urban services; an amount that is 2 to 5 times the budget deficit of the country for 1405. The natural process of forming cities where governments do not intervene is a long process accompanied by investments from municipalities and the private sector for various facilities and services, rather than constructing housing first and then addressing urban services as seen in the directive model of building Parand, Hashtgerd, and other new cities. With the current living standards in a place like Parand, it will take about 100 years for the city to escape the trap of '99-year land' and reach the status of a 'real city'.