The Persian Edition of What if Women Designed the City
The Persian edition of What if Women Designed the City? published by Tahan-Gostar Publications, photographed in Ahvaz, Iran
There are moments in the life of a book that feel larger than publication itself. Seeing What if Women Designed the City? translated into Persian and published in Iran is one of those moments.
What moves me most is not only the arrival of the book in a new language, but the people behind it, the story of their dedication, and the fact that this conversation about women and cities is reaching new audiences at such a significant moment in the history of the Middle East.
Translator Hussein Ehsaei Sehar, an urban designer by training, first encountered the book through its title. ‘I felt I was encountering a distinct and unique work’, he told me. What convinced him to undertake the translation was the perspective it offered on cities through women's lived experience and the 33 practical solutions it proposes for creating safer, greener, more liveable an human-centred urban environments. Equally important was the generosity of Triarchy Press in granting the rights for the book to be published in Persian..
Civil engineer and translator Hussein Ehsaei Sehar with the Persian edition of What if Women Designed the City?, the culmination of two years of dedicated work.
For Hussein, the project also represented the fulfilment of a long-held dream. While completing his Master's degree, he set himself an ambitious goal: to translate a book that could become a reference for students and practitioners. Together with the architect, urban designer and co-translator Marziyeh Touzandehjani, they spent two years bringing the text into Persian. In 2026, that dream became reality.
Yet what struck me most during our conversations was hearing how differently Marziyeh connected with the book as a woman living and working in Iran.
Among its many ideas, the concept of ‘geographies of fear’ resonated most deeply with her. ‘Being a woman in public space means constantly calculating routes, timing, and the nature of one's presence’, she reflected. Referring to gender-segregated buses and poorly lit transport infrastructure, she observed that many aspects of the city make it clear that urban environments were designed primarily with male users in mind. The book, she said, gave language to experiences she had long felt but never fully articulated.
Architect and co-translator Marziyeh Touzandehjani. Through her reflections, the conversation on women and cities finds new meaning in the lived realities of contemporary Iran.
The translation process itself also shifted her thinking. One distinction she found particularly powerful was the difference between designing for women and designing with women. "Without women's genuine participation in decision-making processes, even well-intentioned efforts can reproduce patriarchal patterns," she noted. Equally transformative were the stories of women in the Global South who, despite limited resources, developed creative responses to urban challenges. These examples reinforced a simple but often overlooked truth: women's lived knowledge of cities is itself a form of expertise.
The publication arrives at a particularly sensitive moment in Iran's history. As conflict and uncertainty continue to shape daily life across the region, books may seem modest interventions. Yet they create spaces for dialogue precisely when dialogue is most needed.
As Hussein observed, translation acts as a bridge between experiences, cultures and ways of seeing the world. It enables us to learn from one another and imagine new possibilities for the future.
Marziyeh's reflections point toward those possibilities. If women held greater influence over urban design and governance, she believes the impacts would be felt everywhere: in better-lit transport systems, public spaces that welcome women, children and older people, and neighbourhoods where care infrastructure receives the attention it deserves. More profoundly, she sees women as custodians of a valuable form of everyday knowledge — knowledge accumulated through daily navigation, informal networks, and lived experience.
‘In times of uncertainty and social anxiety, women frequently serve as custodians of everyday knowledge’, she told me. ‘This knowledge holds immense potential for imagining more humane urban futures’.
Her final observation stayed with me long. Despite the structural barriers that remain, she believes women's creativity and experiential knowledge can help open a new horizon: one in which the city is not a field of competition, but a space of mutual care.
Cities are shaped not only in planning offices and council chambers, but also in cafés, streets, homes and public spaces where everyday life unfolds.
This Persian edition extends a conversation that began with a simple question: What if women designed the city? Through the work of its translators and publishers, that conversation now continues in Persian, enriched by the experiences, insights and aspirations of new readers.
My heartfelt thanks go to Hussein Ehsaei Sehar and Marziyeh Touzandehjani for their dedication, care and perseverance throughout this journey. I am equally grateful to Tahan-Gostar Publications and Triarchy Press for helping bring this Persian edition to life.
At a time when many cities across the Middle East are navigating profound uncertainty, the questions raised by this book feel more relevant than ever: Whose knowledge counts? Whose experiences shape our urban futures? And what becomes possible when women are recognised not only as users of urban space, but as co-designers of the places they inhabit?
The answers will be different in every city. But perhaps that is precisely the point. I look forward to discovering how this conversation may contribute to the continuing vitality and evolution of Iran's remarkable cities through the perspectives, experiences and aspirations of Iranian women.
The Persian edition joins a growing family of translations. You can also explore the book in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and discover how independent publishers have helped bring this conversation about women, cities and urban futures to readers around the world.