Mendeley  

Zotero  

Beheshti Asl A, Ebrahimi M R. (2026). Explaining the components of the historical urban landscape of Ahar Bazaar with the approach of Promoting a Sense of Place Belonging. CIAUJ. 11(1), 81-114. doi:10.61882/ciauj.11.1.668
URL: http://ciauj-tabriziau.ir/article-1-668-en.html

Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), with a holistic and value-based approach, aims to preserve, develop, and enhance the quality of urban spaces. However, neglecting the intangible aspects of the environment, such as meaning and cultural significance, has led to visual and experiential anomalies in contemporary cities. Accordingly, the present study employs a mixed-method approach, combining content analysis and logical reasoning, to reinterpret the layers of the historic urban landscape based on expert theories, international documents, and surveys of both specialists and the public, focusing on one of the prominent examples of Islamic Iranian architecture in the city of Ahar—the historic bazaar. The study seeks to derive practical strategies for the semantic revitalization of the bazaar, addressing the gap between its historic and current conditions. To this end, the values identified by researchers within the bazaar area were redefined and analyzed through a researcher-developed questionnaire administered to a purposively selected sample of 88 participants, including shopkeepers, local residents, and citizens. The questionnaire’s content validity was confirmed through evaluation by eight experts, while its reliability was controlled using the inconsistency rate (CR < 0.1) and entropy index based on field data. The analysis revealed that landscape, cultural, social, and historical-memorial values carried the greatest weight within the bazaar. Expanding these values across the historic urban fabric, open-air commercial corridors extending from the covered bazaar, types of activities and social, commercial, and cultural interactions consistent with the original urban functions, visual qualities of the built environment within the influence zones of historic centers, the original internal street network, and spatially adaptable routes were identified as the primary components shaping the historic urban landscape.