Ruminations

Yes, there is room for improvement. From what I have seen and experienced in Tehran, its office building standards do not approach international standards (the only commercial buildings of a principled or "osooli" style/construct seem to be the government ones built around the Bazaar with German assistance during the 1930's, or the Oil Company building which seems to be circa 1960's.) In fact, if I were a developer in Tehran I would focus my energies on building quality office towers to international standards to lease out to commercial tenants seeking the gamut of latest infrastructure, safety, and -yes- prestige (no, in my opinion it is not a given that Tehran has to be ugly.) Because there is a dearth of such product, I think someone who undertakes such a venture would be very successful. One more thing that comes to mind is trash collection- a major capital city (or any city for that matter) needs to have regular containerized trash collection with legitimate dump trucks, I can't envision having quality office towers (or residential product) with trash being unheigenically dumped in open heaps on the side of the streets, first to be scattered around by all manner of stray animals, then being attacked by frightening looking scavengers who seem not to have bathed or had a change of clothes in ages, only to be subsequently collected by a ragtag collection of sanitary workers with their Zamyad pick-ups (the more things change, the more things stay the same...I remember it used to be exactly like this when I used to visit my grandparents' house in Tehran before the Revolution.)