Abbas Abad (Tehran)
Abbās Ābād (Persian: عباسآباد - approximate latitude of 35°44'08"N and longitude of 51°26'08"E) is a large north-central neighborhood of Tehran, Iran, designated within the Seventh Municipal District of the capital.
Abbas Abad was originally conceived in the 1950s and 60's as a housing and residential center for members of various branches of the military, especially for the ground forces (although on a non-exclusive basis; for instance, in the 1970s the district also became home to a number of Armenian-Iranians). Later on, the district grew and its boundaries blended with other expanding nearby neighborhoods. The capital's first television broadcast stations (both for local and the first-ever trans-national television programming broadcast) were situated on Abbas Abad Hills. By the early 70's, the district was experiencing exceptional growth, partly due to its location and the availability of land on still-barren Abbas Abad Hills, which eventually became the site for the never-materialized mega project of Shahestan Pahlavi (see Interesting Facts below). To fund further growth, the government in 1971 issued the largest urban development bond-offering to that date, worth approximately $110 million, with 9% annual interest rate and a 7-year maturity. These bonds were initially traded on Tehran Stock Exchange prior to their repurchase at maturity in 1978-79.
The district's city planning grid was modern and geometric with perpendicular wide avenues (north-south, designated by names) and narrower side streets (east-west, designated by numbers), and most residential plots were subdivided into regular lots of 7 meters wide by 30 meters deep (7x30=210 m2), or 14 meters wide by 30 meters deep (14x30=420 m2, essentially double the size of the smaller, more common lots).
A number of novel and useful practices were used in the residential development of Abbas Abad, which was among the recent districts to be designed anew from the start (some other district were built around and upon older and more established locals, but most of Abbas Abad was built on undeveloped farmland). For example, the apartments on the northern lots of each street were set back to allow for a front-yard, and those on the southern side were to be built adjacent to the street to allow for a backyard, so each building would get the maximum privacy and use of natural sunlight (without much obstructions) while providing the necessary space for the planting of a garden, greenery and/or trees for each house (an essential part of Iranian and Persian architecture). The original building code allowed for the construction of two-family houses (two-floor apartments), although later on (mid- to late 1970s) the code was modified to allow construction of apartment complexes of up to five floors on the larger lots, with strict limits for the location and number of such apartments for each street and avenue.
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