Investigating Effective Factors on Historical Neighborhoods Regeneration with Emphasis on Urban Branding Approach (Case Study: Sang-siah Neighborhood in Shiraz)

Comprehensiveness of “global city” and “urban competitiveness” concepts in recent decades, has introduced new approaches to urban planning realm. One of these approaches is urban branding. Urban branding has adopted place marketing and creative city strategies to re-build the city image in order to attract new residents, investments and tourists. Moreover, urban branding can be effective in urban renewal and neighborhood regeneration projects. It can be considered as a driver of development of historical neighborhoods with the tools of micro interventions and creative strategies. I this study, the researcher examines the driving factors of development of Sang-E-Siah historical neighborhood with an emphasis on urban branding. Therefore, four components “spatial interventions”, “non-spatial interventions”, “place marketing and promotion interventions” and “indirect effects of branding and WOM” are derived from related references. In order to examine the hypothesis, 360 questionnaire are gathered from residents of Sang-E-Siah neighborhood. Analysis of gathered data’s with utilization of Pearson correlation test, revealed that all of the variables has the significant and positive correlation with creative development of this neighborhood. “Infrastructure projects” with the correlation coefficient of 0.83 has the highest impact and “indirect effects of branding” with the coefficient of 0.38 has the least impact from the perspective of residents. The results show that the spatial interventions are really essential before any other interventions of branding in the neighborhood but all of the interventions are useful and effective