Measuring sense of place and identifying the effective components in the historical fabric of Tehran (Case study: The historical neighborhood of Imamzadeh Yahya)

Nowadays, the reduced sense of place, sense of belonging, and identity in inhabitants of many urban areas especially in historical contexts that are undergone extensive and disproportionate redevelopment are an important issue in dealing with these districts. This descriptive-analytical research explores the multidimensional concept of sense of place and identifies its constituent factors in the historical neighborhood of Imamzadeh Yahya as a case study. For this, semi-structured questionnaires and interviews were used to measure sense of place and evaluate the influencing factors. Then, using the correlation test, significant relationships, as well as their strength and direction, were identified between the influencing factors. The results indicate that the perceived sense of place is weak in the residents of the selected neighborhood. This may be linked to the residents’ dissatisfaction with physical, social, activity-related and semantic features of the neighborhood. Also, the findings showed that there is a significant relationship between the residents’ sense of place and their sense of honor of residing in that neighborhood (P<0.05). A higher level of sense of place improves the sense of community belonging among the inhabitants and their tendency to live and stay in their neighborhood. To the contrary, there was no significant relationship between the residents’ place attachment and wayfinding (navigation) in the context (P>0.05, r=0.156). The results also revealed that the existence of historical monuments in the neighborhood does not strengthen sense of place in residents, in spite of their interests in them (mean=4.76), rather, they are only considered as existing potentials in the area. Therefore, it is possible to induce a higher level of sense of place, sense of belonging, and place identity with the help of all potential features and thoughtful planning.