Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mohamadreza Pourjafar ¹
• Seyed Mahdi Khatami ²
• ali soltani ³
• Fatemeh Shams ⁴

¹ Professor of Urban Design, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University

² Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Art and Architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

³ professor, shiraz university

⁴ Urbanism PhD Candidate, TMU, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The concept of a traditional neighborhood as a social unit within a geographical area and in the role of a self-reliance system is perhaps as old as human life. For thousands of years, the neighborhood as an understandable physical and urban heritage has saved the society from collapse by maintaining organized and place-oriented social groupings, and multi-level urban integrity. It seems that in today's societies, in order to achieve the forgotten urban values, redefining the neighborhood has a special place and can be considered the most fundamental urban element and a mediator between the city and the citizens. The present study was conducted in response to the conceptual and spatial nature of the traditional neighborhood and making it subjective, under the interpretive paradigm and in terms of the research method based on the qualitative approach. Since the goal was to understand the conceptual developments of the neighborhood and achieve a comprehensive view of the visible and hidden layers of the traditional neighborhood, documentary studies of the theorists' opinions and thoughts were used. After the systematic review of the sources, the content analysis of the data extracted from the sources was carried out and coding was carried out in 6 stages and was designed in a part-to-whole method and continued until reaching the theoretical saturation stage. The findings show that the overarching themes of the capacities of local communities, including the organizing themes of a) social attachment and b) social cohesion, as well as neighborhood sociability including c) social obligations and d) public good and empowerment, are the main themes of existence. They form the social field of the traditional neighborhood, and by making each of them operational, it is possible to intervene to revive troubled neighborhoods or areas without urban identity.

Keywords

• Neighborhood
• ontology
• social space
• capacities of local communities
• social solidarity

Main Subjects

• Urban Planning