چكيده به لاتين
Human being and social life seem to be very crucial parameters in modern cities’ development and are considered as the basis of urban development from human and cultural point of views.
Holy shrine and its surroundings have the historical characteristic of an urban fabric with more than several hundred years’ history. On the other hand, it has been evolved around a sacred element and produced a concept called proximity in itself. However, the interventions and the development plans of Mashhad city center during the last few decades have resulted in the destruction of collective memories, sense of belonging, readability, memorials aspects, monuments and historical buildings, and the departure of original and indigenous inhabitants from this area and in some way a historical breakdown and semantic failure.
In this regard, this study, after collecting the semantic qualities of the place by means of a library study, explores the concept of proximity through referring to the historical and religious texts, and then, in order to determine the examples and the analysis of the indicators in the current period, based on the theoretical framework extracted, it developed a qualitative questionnaire and semi-structured interview with elites and local people.
Based on the textual data analysis of the interviews with the grounded theory method, the main categories of proximity were obtained as "cultural and historical, religious and spiritual, environmental and physical values and elements, and cultural and physical threats and losses."
As a result, any intervention and urban development of the holy shrine surroundings must be based on the backgrounds and its cultural, historical and social context, which has been gathered in the concept of proximity.
Finally, in the final chapter, based on the research findings, urban design recommendations and suggestions have been presented to improve the semantic qualities of the study area.
Keywords: meaning, urban design qualities, proximity, surroundings of Imam Reza holy shrine, Mashhad city
