Transition from Detached Plazas Close to Traditional Bazaars towards Reviving Lost Spaces Close to Contemporary Shopping Centres, Case Studies: Proma Shopping Center and Bazaar-E Reza in Mashhad

ABSTRACT: In traditional Bazaars social interactions, parallel to economic and movement interactions, created a mixed urban space which was dynamic, lively and attractive to the audience. However, modern shopping centers and shopping malls are economy focused and void of variety of urban spaces like traditional bazaars. The presence of public open spaces and urban squares undetectable from traditional bazaars – called lost space in modern commercial centers – play a great role in supporting citizens’ social relations and interaction, resulting in the increase of social capital. This research focuses on two case studies – Bazaar-e Reza and Proma shopping center – in Mashhad. Therefore, the present article using analysis of the rigorous literature review, by presenting extracted theoretical framework in order to recognize influential constructs in supporting citizens’ social interactions in traditional Bazaars. Since in this research, a mixed – method was used, finally to examine validity of the research and also gaining citizens’ ideas, a questionnaire survey was applied toward utilizing inferential statistic – structural equation modelling by LISREL software. The results of this research reveal that the two spatial-aesthetic and functional constructs play pivotal roles in supporting citizens social interaction. In this regard, vitality and access – linkage as factors of spatial-aesthetic construct and inclusiveness and personalization as factors of functional constructs played main role towards supporting citizens social interaction. Finally the results of this study can be utilized in the formation of urban plazas in today’s commercial centers to provide a suitable context for increasing the social capital level in structure of public open spaces in the city.