An evaluative approach for the development of historical public squares

Abstract EN

Urban public squares, within the context of public spaces, are essential components of cities because they provide spaces for social interaction.

They help sustain public experience through gathering, lingering and wandering through, and engaging together in various human activities and can make significant contributions to communities' development.

In the last three decades, the concept of public space has been redefined within the context of urban space development and new places like shopping malls, parking lots, heavy traffic roads, which made traditional public spaces such as squares, plazas, and neighborhood streets in many instances become disregarded spaces.

This paper aims to discover new approaches to make a successful transformation for the disregarded public squares through identifying public squares and their significance for the city and investigates the relationship between preference and perceived attributes through a comparative analysis of users" and decision-makers" perceptions by presenting critically of published related papers through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles.

Then it determines the framework that could be carried out to revive the disregarded public squares through analyzing successful examples that developed disregarded public squares to offer a great public experience.