The Qualitative Evaluation of Urban Spaces, Application of The Holistic Landscape Approach in the Evaluation of Mashhad Shohada Square Project.

The organization and renovation of Shohada square in Mashhad, entitled as the urban regeneration project has been in progress for the last two decades and now this project has been almost completed. However, it has failed to achieve its goals as it has witnessed the absence and involvement of people. This failure is caused by the perspective in which urban space is considered merely an object. Previous studies on urban regeneration and related projects show that the focus has just been on the functional and physical aspects of urban spaces rather than meaning. The negligence of the meaning could be the main barrier to developing a sense of place in cities. To address this gap, the current study employed a qualitative and holistic approach to evaluating the Shohada square landscape. The study included three phases: The first phase involved a detailed field study and data collection on the physical attributes, activities, and meaning of space by the researcher. In the second phase, data about Shohada square was collected from available research papers, newspapers, reports,etc.and were further analyzed. Using the content analysis the role of the square was scrutinized from the citizens’ perspectives. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted with urban users. The findings revealed that the people’s perceptions of Shohada square fall into five categories: “city center”, “shrine threshold”, “public urban space”, “cold and soulless” and “identityless”. These factors reflect the meanings of Shohada square in the citizen’s minds. The study further drew upon the data from three phases to evaluate Shohada square through the lens of its citizens and then attempted to identify the factors threatening the role of this square. Based on the findings, the study concludes that for the revitalization of Shohada Square, three main aims and relatively policies and strategies must be taken into account namely: increasing the space vitality and its transformation to a civil space, reproducing and adding meaning and keeping the identity of space as well as the spatial reorganization of space for bringing people to space.