Investigation about the Role of Modernism in Old Texture of Cities (Case Study: City of Urmia)

Introduction Place crisis as meaning of social crisis from space and time is one of the obvious problems of contemporary urbanism. The crisis appeared unidentified with no history and no connection urban spaces. Actually this phenomenon is the production of 20th century, although in the first half of the twentieth century modernism worldview dominated on western society and for this reason the modern urbanism took shape as an expression of modern society. The sense of place is the feeling of belonging to a place with the key concepts in human geography and cultural geography. Therefore, surveying the effective factors on improving or deteriorating sense of place has a key role in instilling a sense of place and correlation. Neutral space of life in urban environment and homeless of contemporary mankind in the city structure, indicate that contemporary mankind suffers from homeless. Sense of place is getting the semantic properties of environment and its character by users of the environment. Therefore, the recognition of this concept and effective factors on creating place sense or homeless sense is important in surveying the relationship between mankind and environment, recognition of the physical elements, the tangible features of environment and the meaning derived from. In this way, the rapid and important developments of the twentieth century are shaped as well as a large wave of the industrialization affected the all aspects of life especially physical environment. Specific manifestations of modernism shaped the basis of the human thought in architecture and urbanism. This failure and developments directly affect the country urbanism and took it in a crisis. New built streets and buildings were relatively larger and stronger. Parks and city facilities were made. Thus, the aim of present research is surveying the effects of modernism movement and modern urban appearance, on the homeless sense and the loss of a sense of place in a partial old tissue of Urmia.   Methodology The aim of present research is to survey the effects of modernism movement and modern urban appearance, on the homeless sense and the loss of a sense of place in a partial of old texture in Urmia. Old texture of Urmia is a subjective, historical and cultural symbol of city as a partial part of the downtown area. In these current conditions, urban range is faced with density of activity. Also tendency to build business and administrative units near the market have a lot of pressure on the residential areas and has changed its texture. These changes affect a sense of belonging to place and identity of texture. In order to conduct this research, theoretical foundations of the research include concepts of place sense. This research is a type of fundamental articles with analytical- reviewed methods. Therefore, based on valid and related recourses to the subject as well as with use of library study technics, it is tried to survey the subject of homeless and modernism and in fact relationship between modernism appearance and sense of place.   Discussion and Results In this paper, part of the market area and the Emam Street, both parts of the old core of the city, were selected for review. It is obvious that despite the many changes in the old town it has an identity; so a part of his character is preserved. The result of this research were obtained using profound interviews and researchers views in different times based on survey location techniques, qualitative content analysis. Evaluation of results indicates that that the place as the main source of the individual’s identity is affected by three meaning factor, activity and physical structure. What today more than is emphasized on is the factor of place meaning as the most effective factor of identity processor in the interactive and social relationship of place as well as in the conclusion of place sense.   Conclusions In the study area, the old area of the market, the sense of place toward its counterpart namely Emam Street is exposed to modernist changes during the time located in better position. The most important factor in the promotion of the place sense is the rich human communication in the areas despite problems such as economic, cultural infrastructure, existence of social injustice within the area. There the sense of belonging to place is weak.. Promoting factors of the place sense around the market are existence of the strong human relationship, existence of the old, historical and identity places such as markets, central mosque and old house neighborhoods, and special physical texture.