Understanding Continuity and Change in the Persian Vernacular Settlements: A Comparative Syntactic Analysis of Urban Public Spaces in a Case Study

Abstract

Considering the organized complexity of the city problems, the study tends to understand the process of urban transformation concerning the relation between social and spatial practices in the public places. Thus, the study conducts a comparative syntactic analysis of the urban public spaces, within the past five decades, along with the social exploration in order to understand the process of continuity and change in the historic walled city of Naein, located in the central part of Iran. The interconnections of the people and the hierarchical structure of urban public spaces have led to a considerable spatial configuration in the walled city. Adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study implements the combinational research methods including the descriptive-analytical, comparative simulation, and logical reasoning methods in the case study of Naein. Furthermore, the study uses direct observation, face-to-face interview, questionnaire, documentation, and desk study. Firstly, the paper tends to explore the social attributes of the urban public spaces in the walled city of Naein. Secondly, the study implements a comparative syntactic analysis of the integration, connectivity, and depth factor through a simulation using space syntax approach. In order to understand the process of continuity and change in a comparative study of the sociospatial relations, in the urban public spaces of the case study, the results of the paper provides a descriptive exploration of the urban transformation by reading the syntactic maps in relation to the social attributes of the case study.