Religious Tourism in Urban Spaces or Commodification of Urban Spaces? Case study: Central Area Surrounding the Holy Shrine, Mashhad, Iran

Religious journey in the form of pilgrimage has long been a significant feature of the main world’s religions and mostly is motivated by spiritual and religious needs. However, in modern religious journeys other motivations may be more or less involved. Nowadays, Religious tourism as a transformed form of pilgrimage portrayed as a specific tourism niche and many religious cities are trying to associate with this industry through public spaces in order to promote competitive advantages. Mashhad as the second metropolis of Islamic world, hosting the 8th Shia Imam Reza, has been influenced by this phenomenon and has undergone substantial and dramatic changes to meet the needs of pilgrimage and its infrastructures. Nevertheless, current massive interventions may not be regarded as beneficial phase in the growing of religious tourism. This study aims to evaluate current and proposed interventions of development plans in Two Rah-Bagh (Behesht and Salam) around Imam Reza shrine in Samen district with the corresponding concepts of religious tourism. It seems that the current interventions can lead to commodification of public spaces due to the possible shallow and imprecise perception of religious tourism. Firstly, religious tourism is theoretically reviewed and a number of related measures have been introduced in order to discuss and analyzing plans and intervention of selected cases based on the religious tourism considerations.