Event-Led Regeneration in Reconnecting the Ritual-Religious Structure of Historic Cities (Case Study: Inter-Connected Structure of Historic Shiraz)

Urban regeneration seeks to uncover and recrystallize the essence of the functional and physical genesis of the city. By exploring, listing, stabilizing, reviving, and updating events based on culture and ritual backgrounds, event-led regeneration establishes an inclusive approach that leads to the continuance of celestial life and the improvement of physical quality. The historical process of Shiraz’s spatial structure development has always been based on ritual-religious territoriality, in which the physical substrate as an independent variable has hosted a dependent variable of various events of eclectic natures. Recognizing the spatial structure and ritual structure of the city, together with the review of the background of the ritual that will be accompanied by a list of complementary cultural events in today’s conditions, aims to regenerate the ritual structure of the city and repair the physical-spatial ruptures through the continuity and consolidation of the historical-content richness. Formulating and presenting solutions related to this process are the goals of this research. The conceptual framework of the research was compiled through an overview of previous studies. The public realm’s historical role and the continuum of ritual places in the event-led main structure of the city were reviewed. Then, by applying the SOAR strategic model and the ANSOFF matrix, a list of eventfulness strategies based on the historical-cultural context was formulated. Analyzing and evaluating the dual conditions of context and content, including a retrospect on the interconnected structure of historical Shiraz and the ritual-religious events flowing through the structure, resulted in a set of strategies that subsequently led to the proposition of relevant policies to achieve the event-led regeneration objectives.