Affecting Factors on the Formation of Sense of Location in Public Minds

During the present century, the term location with its extensive range of meanings has been presented in almost all architectural spaces. Building of location has incarnated implications and beliefs of human beings and has a deep relationship with their existence. For a location to remain in the public minds, it must attract a vast majority of addresses and create a sense of attachment to itself. Sense of attachment is a sense of space that individuals feel themselves as a part of it and where they find their desires and transactions. Thus, space in this sense of location turns into a context for individuals’ social memories and meanings. One of the problems considered in today’s cities is the low quality of citizens’ life. This lack of quality results from inattention to location and its meaning; A location which relates humans with other layers of their existence and these layers help humans recognize their environment that leads to a general feeling to space in the addresses. This general feeling which is created after perception and judgment of a particular environment in person is called sense of location which is an important factor in creating coordination between the individual and the particular environment, better use of the environment, user’s satisfaction and finally a sense of attachment to environment and a continuous presence in it.Sense of attachment is a strong connection and a significant factor among people and location. This connection is positive and leads to an expanded deep relationship and individual’s interaction with the environment which can be more extended by the passage of time. In fact, sense of attachment is a human sublime feeling by which the individual and the environment interact with each other. This feeling finally leads to create individual, environmental and social deep connections. Based on ideas of existentialism, sense of attachment is a preliminary and essential need of humans which they try to satisfy. Different degrees of this feeling in architectural spaces has been accompanied by different feelings and reactions including different classifications in architectural spaces such as sacrifice for location, interest in location and commitment to location. As a result, creating a sense of attachment in architectural spaces leads to transforming them into meaningful locations for individuals and developing environmental-human connections and changing the space to a meaningful and lasting environment which will lead to the formation of a permanent location in the memories of human beings as well as their continuous presence. In this study which aims to retrieve  and introduce the role of each element and component forming the sense of location and attachment to it, experts’ opinions and judgments were considered based on reviewing texts and related documents on this subject. And by presenting analytical diagrams, roles of these factors in the formation of sense of location and attachment were analyzed. Finally, a permanent location model including the main parameters and factors as well as qualities affecting the formation of   a lasting sense of location in the minds of the public was presented.