Authors

• Abbas Tarkashvand
• Heydar Jahanbakhsh
• Maryam KarimiNezhad

Abstract

The changes in urban life today has resulted in the less importance or complete loss or of many known urban spaces and social and cultural functionalities. These changes are mostly by disorientation, lack of identity and disaffiliation of citizens in social activities, whereas urban identity reinforces the link between city and citizens, and brings them special social characteristics, through the association of memories and sense of belonging in them. One way to accomplish this matter is utilizing the capacity of historic evocative buildings in the cities. Based on this, the purpose of this research is the feasibility study for the revival of urban space around the historical bridges of the city with emphasis on citizen’s identity and collective memory. The case study for this research is urban space around the historic bridge of Langroud city. In this research, effective factors in creating evocative urban space for citizens were evaluated by a questionnaire. The research
method presented in this paper was survey method using a case study. For this reason, two kind of questionnaires has been used and the reliability of each ones has been verified by calculating Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Also, the questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS software. The results indicate that elements such as meaning, structure and activity have the highest impact respectively, in the revival of urban space and creating sense of belonging around the historic bridge of Langroud city. The final result is that structural planning around historic bridges should be done in order to improve appropriate social and cultural activities, and give meaning to the city. It also indicates the role these valuable elements have in creating evocative urban space and identity for citizens.

Keywords

• Collective Memory
• Urban Identity
• Sense of Place
• Historic Bridge
• Langroud City