For years, urban decay and intervention in targeted urban areas have constituted a major challenge for Iran’s planning system. Despite the establishment of numerous institutions, the formulation of policies, implementation of plans, and allocation of substantial budgets, these problems persist. The objectives defined for intervention practices have not been achieved, while the scale of problems has expanded across multiple dimensions.



The dominance of a rationalist approach to planning and evaluation, emphasizing predictability, quantitative measurement, and decision-making based on established knowledge, provides limited capacity to address the complexity, uncertainty, and contextual differences inherent in planning processes. This study applies a pragmatist approach to evaluation, examining the National Document for Sustainable Urban Regeneration as a case study. Following an explanation of pragmatist foundations and their distinction from the rationalist paradigm, the study employs Charles Hoch’s evaluative framework across four dimensions: “selection of planning alternatives,” “assessment of consequences and outcomes,” “impact on the public interest,” and “synthetic production.”



The evaluation draws on the document itself, relevant laws and resolutions, and the narratives of actors at different policy-making and implementation levels. The findings reveal fundamental shortcomings across all four dimensions. Alternative options were not developed, and the document’s formulation lacked effective dialogue among stakeholders. The metaphor of “regeneration” failed to establish a meaningful and operational linkage among diverse institutions and actors. No shared understanding of the “public interest” emerged, while concrete experiences and situated knowledge were not incorporated into knowledge production or the formulation of new solutions.



Accordingly, pragmatist evaluation, by shifting attention from formal compliance with predetermined objectives toward context, experience, consequences, and the processes through which interventions are formulated and revised, can provide an alternative framework for evaluating intervention policies.