Tehran in the 20th Century: A Family Environmental History
July 17, 2025 By: Amir Meshgini
I grew up in Tehran, Iran and emigrated to Canada in 2021. My father and grandfather were also born in Tehran. I will mostly focus on their history for the purpose of this writing. My grandfather was born in 1930, my father in 1965, and I was born in 1996. Across these generations, Iran underwent huge political and social changes, which affected policies and practices regarding the environment.
My grandfather, born around 1930, lived in a version of Tehran that still had dirt roads and was very rural except for the downtown. They had a Coca-Cola factory very close to where they lived, and cars were considered a luxury. He married a woman and together they worked on their farm, and they commuted every day to their farm, maybe 40km away and produced food, making their living that way. My father, along with his siblings, spent many weekends and holidays helping him. They would still rely on wells for farms and perhaps drinking. Nature was respected in their view as Muslims, and they were dependent on it for their everyday living. At the time, the population of Iran was roughly 15 million, and they had enough resources to meet the demands, yet King Reza Pahlavi was transforming the country and its technology by exporting knowledge and equipment from Europe and North America.
Oil, which was discovered in Iran by the British in 1908, was cheap and in the early 1900s, Iran was trying to push back against foreign control, especially from Britain. When oil was discovered by the British in 1908, it changed everything. It was cheap, easy to access, and soon became the heart of Iran’s economy. In 1951, Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry to take back control, but that led to a coup backed by the U.S. and the UK, which ended his leadership. This cheap oil also meant people and the government were less concerned with sustainability. The new king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was aiming to modernize the cities, which were being transformed by machines, concrete, and highways.
My father, born in 1965, grew up during that transformative period. As a boy, he and his friends would dig tunnels through the snow and roast potatoes inside them. Today, though, snow rarely falls in the lower parts of Tehran, and when it does, it doesn’t last long. The city has become hotter and drier over time. Even compared to my father’s time, the winters are milder, and summer hotter. My grandfather eventually sold his farm, and my father went on to become a firefighter. There were many factors that led to a revolution in Iran in 1979 led by my father’s generation– he and so many people from his generation regret it now– and populist slogans of the revolution leader, Khomeini, such as free water and electricity and giving people their oil money back were among them.
When the 1979 revolution happened, it wasn’t just a political turning point but also marked a setback for environmental progress. The new Islamic regime, dealing with eight years of war with Iraq and prioritizing its ideology over everything else, couldn’t care less about sustainability and conservation. Since then, environmental issues in Iran have worsened. The once Lake Urmia has nearly dried up, many Iranian animals have gone extinct, the droughts and sand storms in the south are more frequent due to the construction of numerous dams and desertification, underground water reserves are shrinking, and worst of all, there is no meaningful national discussion about climate change.
I was born in 1996, and when cars were not a luxury anymore. Every household had at least one of the cheap and poor-quality cars made by the Iranian government which had extremely low pollution standards. Cheap oil also made the construction of numerous highways possible and cheap cars in a few years made Tehran’s air one of the worst. Traffic also became a never-ending problem. It could take you three to four hours to go from one point in the east of the city to the west. I remember having so many of my school days cancelled due to air pollution. Due to huge population growth, 80 million people at that point, construction projects were very common on every street during my childhood. Four or five-story apartments replaced the houses that had a small garden or a backyard. Population density also meant less space for each person and more smog and depression. People often go to the northern part of Iran, beyond the Alborz mountains, and near the Caspian Sea, which has a subtropical climate, to escape the pollution in wintertime and the heat in summertime. I see it more common among the younger generation to promote conservationist ideas, but I do not think even my father’s generation cared as much. After going through a revolution and eight years of war, and an oppressive regime, perhaps environmentalist values won’t be your top priority.