Resilience as an Experience: What Makes a Neighborhood Home? (Exploring a Community’s Lived Experience of Oudladjan Historic District)

In the past, resilience, as a concept, was mostly limited to post-crisis physical measures in the event of large-scale catastrophes. But today, it is believed that resilience should be built step by step in the scale of urban places to gradually complete the whole picture of a resilient city or country. But, according to the researcher’s studies on the literature, building a resilient place has its own set of requirements in three physical, sociocultural and mental categories. Among these requirements, people’s mentality about where they live is considered the most important one for shaping a resilient place. These are the qualities that make a place challenged with all kinds of physical and sociocultural adversities, home. As the literature puts it, sense of belonging to the place, and sense of place are the two mental qualities contributing to a resilient place. This research attempted to examine these factors in one of the neighborhoods of Oudladjan historic district where despite challenging with an array of physical and sociocultural problems on an everyday basis, some old residents still consider it their home. Exploring these people’s mindset by gathering and analyzing their lived experience of this neighborhood, it is found that there are other mental factors contributing to this community’s resilience besides the two mentioned ones. This research is conducted to answer a longstanding question of dealing with Oudladjan historic area where has not been quite successful putting behind an everyday aggravating crisis challenging it for about 30 years, despite all management, planning, and design attempts. Besides, our indigenous body of literature has not pointed out resilient place and its requirements very eagerly. So, it is important to explore this subject and provide appropriate grounds for this kind of research