The Production of Sociable Community Spaces in Inner- Tehran Districts

The importance of people-produced sociable spaces as opposed to planned and design spaces such as parks and cafés, is manifest in the opportunities the former offer for socialising and responding to a wide range of people’s needs. Using demographic qualitative methods, the present research identifies sociable spaces, bringing together urban sociology and urban design to describe the built environment’s physical characteristics and facilitating socialising moods in people’s everyday life. Due to its bonds with people’s everyday life, Guisha High Street is chosen as the case to study a wide range of social behaviours and moods. Research data is initially collected through field observations, behavioural mapping, shared observations, and then through deep group interviews in four groups of five people and 10 individual interviews. Descriptive analyses of the findings indicate that sociable spaces are formed on edges, thresholds, and urban amenities. The production of these spaces through people’s discovery and appropriation is interpreted based on five themes: being in the district centre, searching the environment, creative strategies, normative suspension, and pleasures of socialisation.