Industrial Tourism as a Sustainable Strategy for Preserving Industrial Heritages (Case Study: Isfahan Old Silo)

Nowadays, industrial tourism, especially visiting old factories, is one of the markets with special tourism interests, which will not only create an opportunity to preserve the tangible and intangible industrial heritage but also provide additional income for the factory by turning a part of the factory into an industrial heritage site and it will be a strategy for the factory to get out of the single - product economy. Old silos are one of the industrial-agricultural architectural heritages some of which are still in use today and will be abandoned if they are not turned into a suitable use. Old silos contain great historical, educational, and industrial values. One of these silos is the old silo of Isfahan, which is the case study of the present study. This research pursues the following two goals: 1) to discover suitable solutions to preserve old silos as an architectural and industrial-agricultural heritage based on previous studies, and 2) to identify sustainable change land uses for obsolete industrial space of the old silos of Isfahan City. The current research is exploratory-applied and uses the systematic review method. The data collection tools were articles, books, newspapers, and websites. The findings of the research illustrated that old silos in the world are used for tourism (museum, rural and industrial heritage site to promote industrial tourism, and artistic tourism center) and non-tourism (social and cultural centers, sports halls, and multipurpose warehouses). In addition, the results of the qualitative comparative analysis of the old silo of Isfahan with other old silos of the world and Iran indicated that turning the obsolete industrial space of the old silos of Isfahan city into an eco-museum of bread and wheat or an industrial-agricultural heritage site for the promotion of industrial tourism is the most suitable change land use. Regarding this, using color performance and painting in the landscape of the old silo is a strategy to attract more visitors and tourists.