Journal of Iranian Architecture & Urbanism(JIAU)

Abstract Extended Abstract Background and Objectives: Contemporary commercial spaces fall under quasi-public spaces, which have long served as the physical platforms of social, economic, and cultural aspects for public life. Today, these spaces are not just confined to commercial functions; rather, they have taken on a cultural turn to turn into places for recreation and leisure of the young people and also social contexts for the formation of their identity and behavior. Also, anthropological developments have changed the man-place and man-man link in the place. In modern society, individual tastes are important, while modernism and change are recognized as the social values of the modern world. Changes made to commercial spaces, on the one hand, and the individual-environment relationship in these spaces, on the other hand, have affected and transformed users’ environmental evaluation criteria of commercial spaces, while creating new challenges and opportunities at the same time. Hence, young people are influential in public and quasi-public spaces, and they should be considered as a large resource in planning processes. The present study aimed to examine the environmental characteristics of contemporary shopping malls from the perspective of the youth by investigating Isfahan City Center Complex as the case study.
Methods: The methodology of this study was descriptive-evaluative. Since people’s evaluation of the environment may vary from one individual to another, it is required to adopt a qualitative and exploratory approach to meet this goal. Hence, the present study used case study strategies and qualitative approaches. Data were collected in two general sections. In the first section, a self-evaluation tool was used for the free expression of beliefs and attitudes in the form of semi-structured open-ended interviews. Interview items and propositions were developed based on the conceptual framework of the study, encompassing people’s holistic assessment of locations, the length of time spent in these locations, their preferences within these environments, the driving factors behind their visits, and their suggestions for alterations, reductions, or additions to these places. In the interviews, purposive sampling was used and the interviews with the youth ranging from 20 to 30, who had visited Isfahan City Center Complex, continued in several stages until theoretical saturation was met. As for the validity and reliability of the study, library sources, field observations and two place- and individual-oriented behavior maps or behavior tracking, along with the interviews, were used. These non-interventional field observations were performed in a macro-level behavioral unit, for which behavioral mapping was provided for ten days with the presence of the observer at Isfahan City Center Complex in March 2020.  Also, interview data were analyzed using Theme Analysis Technique and Atlas TI 8 Software, while observation data were analyzed by simple descriptive statistics.
Findings: All open codes and categories were extracted from interviews and analyzed, as only the final criteria were provided in the form of findings following the investigation of indicators and field observations. These observations were collected for each behavioral center at three-time intervals, while group movements and behaviors were outlined in the form of lines in separate maps; after this, all tracking maps were outlined in the form of a combined map resulting from an overlap of single tracking. In the next step, the validity of the expressions made within the self-evaluation tools, the indicators resulting from responses and their divergence from and convergence with what occurs in field observations were examined and interpreted. Accordingly, the youths’ evaluation of the Isfahan City Center Complex involves a variety of physical-environmental, functional-activity, social-cultural, and individual-psychological dimensions. Each of these dimensions has indicators that sometimes overlap, and are finally presented in the form of theoretical models.
Conclusion: Findings revealed that commercial spaces at Isfahan City Center Complex are affected by the environmental factors across physical, functional-activity, social-cultural, and individual dimensions. Consequently, these factors have reshaped the complex, turning it into a quasi-public space characterized by diverse social and cultural interactions. As a result, new commercial space experiences have emerged, particularly for young individuals. In addition, non-environmental economic factors, marketing and managerial factors, complex maintenance, sales festivals and customer affairs and services affect young peoples’ evaluation. Thus, planners and officials are required to consider physical, functional and social changes to affect the quantity and quality of mandatory, voluntary and social behavioral patterns in spaces. Considering physical structures proportionate to some voluntary behaviors, interactive social behaviors and social partnerships, such as creating spatial diversity, along with intermediary spaces and natural views, creating a system of interactive equipment and furniture to create official and non-official sitting opportunities, creating unofficial and flexible collective spaces using decorations, local elements and symbols for holding ceremonies, and establishing social, religious and national festivals and ceremonies, which conform to our culture in local market samples, could contribute to this goal. In this regard, it is essential to use collaborative approaches between young users and space officials in designing and planning contemporary commercial spaces, such as Isfahan City Center Complex. In the end, concerning commercial spaces planning, it is required to strike a balance between preserving elements from local cultures and historical spaces, as seen in traditional examples, and incorporating these elements into contemporary contexts.

Abstract Extended Abstract
Background and Objectives: Finding a phenomenon’s origin and initial formation process has always been one of the basic questions raised in all science branches, and urban morphology is a branch based on this motivation. Research on the origin of an unplanned urban area is not as easy as planned ones. Before the establishment of modern urbanism in Iran, most residential tissues had been formed during unplanned processes. Due to the lack of a comprehensive real estate registration system, there is no precise information about the division of urban lands and the construction of passages and buildings in residential alleys. In simpler terms, the origin of its formation is unknown. In the present study, a part of the intermediate urban form of Gorgan city is selected to identify the origin of a spontaneous residential tissue. It is attempted to discover all the events affecting its urban morphology from 1921 to 1974. Since this intermediate urban form is located between the historic tissue and the contemporary urban tissue, in terms of time, it is located between two different generations from the date of formation of the city (1921 to 1971). Consequently, it is cognate with the historic tissue patterns based on traditional society and its gradual development. Likewise, historically, it is more closely related to the research time, and it is easier to follow the developments and transformations in the samples than in the historical tissue. Thus, it facilitates receiving collective awareness of the formation process. Like any other urban tissue, the physical elements forming urban morphology in the intermediate urban form include roads, lots, and buildings. Nonetheless, the combination of these elements creates a comparatively discrete identity from the planned tissues. In the intermediate urban form, which is typically spontaneous, there are intertwined relationships between roads, lots, and buildings; as such, to separate these elements from each other is not as easy as a contemporary planned tissue. Accordingly, the present study aims to study the factors affecting the formation and deformation of each urban morphology element and their combination with each other to explain the entity and complexity of urban morphology in spontaneous tissues.
Methods: The research method of this paper is based on a qualitative approach. It is a combination of grounded theory reading (Systematic) and a comparative diachronical morphology. Hence, the data were extracted both from structured interviews and with the help of morphological development analysis techniques to compensate for the lack of written data by deriving oral data from the knowledge of the early residents of the tissue.
Findings: The city of Astarabad, now known as Gorgan, could be a good case for sampling in this study because Gorgan has never been the center of a caliphate or monarchy despite its long history of habitation. Thus, unlike a typical capital city, it did not face fast and unexpected transformations due to the establishment of military and administrative centers or large-scale migrations and maintained its natural growth rate over the years. Since the beginning of the present century, the city has been a regional-scale nucleus and has played an economic role in surrounding micro-settlements. The findings reveal that urban morphology factors act as a matrix pattern, and their effectiveness does not correspond to a linear process. The components of this matrix consist of three areas: actors, action/interaction, and conditions, each of which includes a set of influential categories and has its types and dimensions. Individuals, families, and the local community are considered the most effective actors. Regarding action/interaction, property rights to land division, the agreement between the rights holders and the legal system are recognized as the most effective factors. The most important underlying conditions are climate, land economy, and household, respectively.
Conclusion: As a result, the urban form is shaped by conscious individual/family choices, social interactions, and the legal system; That is, the will and ownership choice in the formation and development of the urban fabric has played a more prominent role than laws and regulations. So that from the micro-level (individual) to the macro-level (legal system), the degree of effectiveness is gradually reduced and, in turn, prevents the formation of a top-down linear pattern. Moreover, the existing terrain, in an artificial or a natural form, plays a key role in urban morphology. Generalizing the results of this paper requires adopting a phenomenological approach to the analysis of each category obtained at the level of dimensions and characteristics, which requires another study. However, the generalizability of the results to other cities in Iran requires more comparative research, so there is a need to study more and more diverse examples from different cities along with this research.