The elements of Public participation in traditional cities to achieve social sustainability

Achieving to social sustainability is so important in contemporary cities and public participation isone of the solutions that comes up through an understanding of human values and qualifying man-made spaces. Surveying urban context of traditional cities reveals signs of public participatory at different levels. public participation, particularly in urban public spaces leads to social interaction, security and social stability. Participatory architecture is known as design approach, but in many cases, like political approach it is a medium that gradate social interactions. This study plans to introduce a variety of public participatory and its approaches like participatory, community & social architecture, then by researching about social activities in public spaces of historical cities recognizes how people participate in each of these spaces and its effect on social sustainability of the city. The hypothese is: despite the changes in political & social system of modern cities and the new concepts of contemporary public participation, The patterns and elements of the past public participation could be classified and compared with contemporary concepts. The cognition of public participatory elements on historical urban contexts is not just a design approach; as a social event, analysis of this public activities and their interaction with built environment could be a successful case study to represent solutions for participatory architecture. Yazd is one of these historical cities. Researching in historical context of the city, surveying public activities in different open spaces of urban context and companionship with habitants, reveals how these activities and spaces quality have changed in time. The conclusion represents how these all can help reconstruction and rehabilitation of historical context of cities by public participation.