Citizens' Sense of Place and Memories: Phenomenological Analysis of Sense of Place in Ancient Urban Gates (Case Study: Tabriz City)

The gates of the old city as a place of transition and guidance in the past have been highly efficient in establishing social actions and interactions between man and space. However, today, the greater tendency to the physical dimensions in the development of cities has caused what the urban environment offers to be incompatible with what citizens demand in their social lives. Accordingly, we attempted to study the basics of the sense of place and its roots in the city gates to investigate whether historical gates in the public opinion of the contemporary city have the ability to reconnect the city with the ancient structure. Therefore, by presenting a scientific framework and descriptive-analytical method and applying objective observations - presenting a questionnaire and interviewing a statistical population of 100 people - the area of ​​four gates of the Qajar fortress of Tabriz was studied as a case study. Based on the findings, the existence of various mental-memory manifestations derived from the history of the place, it is possible to improve the connection between the old core of the city with the contemporary structure by applying strategies such as: recreating old signs related to their historical position, adapting the appearance and function of the place, as well as creating silent spaces to create opportunities for a better understanding of the environment.