Geographical Approach to the Promise and Reality of Urban Public Spaces with Emphasis on the Role of Ideologies

Problem statement:

 The question of ideology has occupied the minds of most urbanologists from the past to the present during modernity. The present study is a geographical-philosophical introduction to the role of this concept in the public spaces of cities. The discussion of ideology is one of the cases that has not been widely studied in explaining the physical, social, and psychological affairs of public spaces in Iran. From this point of view, it is necessary to pay attention to this issue in urbanological analysis. Based on this, this research seeks to answer the following questions: What can be done to create successful cities in the 21st century? How can the role of face-to-face presence in creating public spaces of cities be explained from the philosophical and scientific perspectives? What is ideology? And what effects does it have on the physical, social, and psychological spaces of cities? How does the relationship between socialist and neoliberal ideology and the public spaces of the city create a space?

This study attempts to shed light on the concept of ideology and show its relationship with urban public spaces from a geographical perspective to achieve urban spaces on a human scale.

This study employed a textual analysis. To find the answer, we first tried to explain the characteristics of a good city, the role of face-to-face presence in human interactions, the formation of social affairs as well as the concept of public rights and collective interests. Then we explored the use of different socialist and neoliberal ideologies as a case study.

The results show that limiting and expanding the concept of public space in cities based on various ideologies changes its spatial, social, and psychological form and create an active, vibrant, and democratic civil society in which the concept of the right to the city can find its true form, creating the possibility and opportunity for purposeful social interaction and exchange, is one of the requirements for the creation of this matter and also the factor of the success of cities in the past and will be in the future.