A Comparative Study of Place Identity in Traditional and Modern Retail Spaces: Experience of Urmia

Articles in Press

Document Type : Scientific-Research

Authors

Alireza Ahmadi ¹

Hamidreza Nouri-Eibloo ²

Ali akbar Taghiloo ³

¹ PhD student university of zanjan

² Master student, university of urmia

³ Professor, faculty of humanities, university of urmia

https://doi.org/10.22067/jgusd.2026.94057.1525

Abstract

This study provides a comparative evaluation of the place identity of historical and new retail spaces in Urmia, employing a functionalist approach. It focuses on the factors and dimensions that influence place identity . By collecting 323 researcher - made questionnaires from eleven retail markets in urmia city, field evidence was evaluated descriptively and analytically, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to model the factors affecting place identity in retail spaces and to figure out the various aspects that can intervene in spatial order of retails and their identity. As mentioned, in order to analyze the gathered data from field area and through researcher-made questionnaires, we used functionalist approach. The functionalist approach, applied to avoid reducing place and its identity factors to mere objects, allows for an analysis that does not fall into historicism. By applying the Deep Picture of Functionalism (DPF), the study avoids equating the functions of factors influencing retail place identity with capitalism and de- territorialization of late capital in a flat world-view. Instead, as evidences from retales in Urmia revealed, it opens an in-between space that de- constructs the binary of traditionalism and modernism, stripping them of their hylomorphic meanings. This enables practical intervention by both human and non-human agents in the spatial order of the market. The article concludes that the debate between tradition and modernity in urban planning in Iran and Urmia has a new contender, which, through deconstruction, and on a plane of immanence, ties the place identity of the retails, to its functions.

Keywords

Place

Place identity

Retail

Functionalism

Urmia

Subjects

• urban planinnin

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