Investigation of the Relation between Memorability and Social Collaboration in Regeneration of Urban Identity, Case Study: Shahrdari Square in Rasht

Understanding the urban environment is a mental process which is done through person’s connection with his surrounding space. A person receives environment sensory messages and creates an image of the environment in his mind. One of the effective factors in making this image is individual or collective memories in an environment. Memorable spaces are places which one has experienced them before and they are familiar. Finding familiar spaces can cause feeling satisfaction and safety within the environment. On the other hand, change and transformation or destroying the familiar spaces can lead into a feeling of being lost, rootless and missing a part of life in people. The meaning of memory in urban spaces is synonymous and accompanied with the feeling of belonging and identity. The accumulation of memory in city depends on the living history in it. Therefore, new residents in cities have little sense of belonging to the place in which they live. Thus, it can be said that, there are interactions between urban identity and collective memory. Social nature and urban spaces are always the social relations platform. These spaces find their identity after a special happening or occurrence of a city experience affected by a period. In addition, their ordinary and social life are kept in the mind of city residents and left unique memories in the mind and heart of the old and new citizens which after years are still passing from one generation to another reinforcing the city identity and collective memory. Therefore, the share of these valuable spaces in reviving the urban identity, enhancing liveliness and the feeling of belonging in citizens should not be neglected. Today, humans’ urban identity and their collective memory have been ignored and people missed their connection with places that they are living in, also the lack of place identity and its memorial character has caused problems in citizens’ individual and collective identity. Urban spaces can be designed and planned to identity revival and old memory protection, create new memories and provide necessary context for urban events. Shahrdari square in Rasht is also one of the richest public area in the city which was one of the most places in the Rasht regarding its location in geographical, historical, commercial and traffic center of the city from the beginning of its formation. It has been the place for walk, amusement, shopping, recreation and social life of the citizens. Shahrdari square after years, because of its cultural heritage and social wealth still takes advantage of a great identity and cultural facilities. But in the past decades because of social and cultural developments, population growth and displacement of old and noble residents of this area and their distribution in the city and the corresponding social problems, this central and full of identity urban space is going to lose its structural and social values which leads into lack of identity for the people living in the city. In fact, the current condition of Rasht Shahrdari square is a combination of what is remained from long ago, a damaged body during development process and the product of the contemporary time. The retrieval of these meanings in Rasht Shahrdari square and its boundary are within the research area of this study. In fact, with the recreation of old values along with response to current values, we try to utilize the potential of Shahrdari square and people presence, and also redefine the city center with the creation of a memorial environment and elements that support urban identity. So, three factors including place identity, memorability and social collaboration create the main variables of this study. This research is mixed heuristic methods while we have used questionnaire to collect our data. The results of the study show that there is a direct and positive relation between memorability and social collaboration with place identity as a dependent variable but the memorability index is more effective in increasing the place identity. Eventually, it can be said that regeneration as a method in reconstruction of old textures needs social revival along with the structural revival. Identifying and considering the past values and reviving the social life in these textures can cause the reconstructed texture to be actually the modernized one of the very old texture which resembles the past identity and values for residents and also answers today citizens’ needs.