A Search for the Socio-Spatial Bonds in Iranian Traditional Cities

Nasim Hamed¹ Mahsa Jalali Rad²

1) Iran, Tehran University, Email:
2) Iran,Tehran University, Email:

IOI Code : XBGK-EAHEG
Publication : The first international conference and the 2nd National Conference on Urbanism, Architecture and Civil Engineering and Arts(kbuaca.ir)
Abstract :
    The goal of architectural planning and design is providing a proper context for a better quality of life. Attaining to this goal needs a better understanding of social aspects of human life. Human talents and values enhance with social interaction and relationship to others. In this research, high level of social interaction and mutual relations are regarded as a progress and positive value in human social life in an urban context. In Iranian traditional cities the layers of urban life, from personal space to social spaces, have contained a clear hierarchy. The sequences of spaces were started from the internal private spaces of houses, such as room, and extended to the external spaces of yard and the vestibule, porch and the alley and the bazar up to the main square of the city. These spaces were interwoven with in-between spaces of different scales. This hierarchy of continues movement, helped the division of spatial territories, the order of social relations, and even the sense of security among residents. The speed of movement, in an overlap of layers in the micro to macro scales, was reduced intentionally and even reached stillness in some cases, in order to provide a better context for social interactions. Places such as the yard (for family relations), the neighborhood center (for the mutual relations of neighbors), and city square (for the communication of the residents) provided the socio-spatial bond of the urban life. Nowadays, with the modern urban networks, the city streets and squares have turned into passageways for cars, so that, human interactions, have replaced with traffic corridors. Thus, with the rise of modern movement and the ever-increasing need for urban development, the designers have reduced the quality of behavior setting by abstracting urban patterns and declining human aspects of urban life. These places which are indispensable to the city’s life lose meaning as they are devoid of their physical form. The present study is a qualitative research that tends to analyze the hierarchy and the conventional patterns of the Iranian traditional cities in order to categorize their valuable criterion. This criterion can be used for a comparative study of traditional and modern urban design to find theoretical and formal pattern of socio-spatial bonds in modern Iranian cities. The outcome of study can be helpful to planners and designers to create livable urban spaces, based on Iranian culture.

Keywords : hierarchy of socio spatial bonds iranian traditional cities social interactions