Journal of Researches in Islamic Architecture

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Looking at the structure of the cities, especially older parts of the city, it is seen that most of the urban public parts and elements are constructed not with any reliance on state resources and credits, but based on the consecration systems and public investments. Added to the sublime religious, social and economic values latent in the consecration culture, its impact in creating identity and sense of attachment to urban places is also notable. It seems that the effect of creating identities that the consecrated places create in the social-physical frame of the cities, can today be stressed upon as a proper response to the shortcomings of the citizens' social relations and lack of the sense of belonging to the city. The main aim of this study is to recognize the role of consecrated elements in the social-physical identification in urban neighborhoods on the one hand and to determine the effects of this valuable culture in reinforcing social interactions and improving the sense of belonging to the physical spaces of the cities, on the other hand. The research method of this study includes two stages: the first was implemented with a descriptive-analytic method and was based on library sources that provide the theoretical framework of the study and the second stage that was incorporated with the survey method, using questionnaires, which were distributed among the residents of district 12 neighborhoods of Tehran. The results indicate that the consecrated places, because of their unique characteristics in the city's social-physical frame, have effectively caused the firmness of identity and consistency in urban life in these neighborhoods.

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Identity has become one of the most fundamental and important issues in people’s various areas of life in today's society, especially in countries like Iran has in the contemporary era. It seems that people who live in the modern society have multiple identities that should be recognized well. Identity of a place is one of the aspects understood as a way of communication between people and places through culture, history, collective memory, the type and nature of technology, performances, signs, forms and symbols of the city and visual and physical features. In this study, one of the categories of place identity, identity in the neighborhoods of Iran’s cities, was investigated. Existence of neighborhoods in the structure of historical cities in Iran, as a key element of the body of the city, balanced social life in cities. Neighborhoods as places of human life not only could affect the environment, but also improved the quality of social life. Hence, the aim of this study is to recognize the social variables affecting the identity of the neighborhoods of Islamic-Iranian’s cities. In this study both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. To do so, at first the concept of identity was identified through the studies of documents of experts’ ideas and social variables affecting identity were extracted. Then, the variables identified by questionnaires and random sampling among 100 residents of the neighborhood of Shanbedi in Bushehr were evaluated and reviewed. The results of the evaluation and analysis of factor analysis and Pearson correlation, which was used as a statistical method in this research, indicated that there is a strong, significant and meaningful relationship between the variables of sense of belonging, peace and image of identity and each of the factors with different effectiveness affects the idea of neighborhoods and peace had the strongest correlation with identity. Furthermore, the criterion of security is a variable which had a moderate and significant correlation with identity.