Identifying and Evaluating Effective Factors on Publicness of Public Spaces

Critic scholars of modern cities believe that public spaces of current cities are moving toward privatization, strict management and control, not enjoying required publicness for establishment of social interactions and socialization. Considering that, publicness level of a spaces, generally, determines its functioning way and considering present related literatures to decreased public places, some questions are developed in this regard: which factors are influential in publicness of an urban public space and is there any relationship between privatization of public spaces and decadence of traditional public spaces? The aim of present study is to explain influential factors of creating and promoting publicity, considering different types of public spaces in Tabriz city. To answer the underlying question, firstly, the concept of public spaces was studied and some criteria were developed in a model involving five aspects of ownership, management, accessibility, users/uses and inclusiveness, in order to evaluate publicness of the space. Spaces of Abrasan crossroad, Shahnaz St. (i.e.Shariati) and Laleh Park spaces were selected in order to evaluate the criteria. 100 questioners were filled by those who had experienced being in all of the three spaces and then the collected data were analyzed by SPSS. The data were in line with criteria evaluation and answering to the research questions and hypotheses. The findings of the study indicated that management factor of Laleh Park earned most points and this space in spite of the limited access and private ownership is more welcomed in terms of publicness as a public space.