Public space by itself does not form a community; rather, a community is built by people who participate in community building activities. Despite being the capital city of Iran with so many public and semipublic spaces such as parks, restaurants, cafés and shopping malls, Tehran is still missing a dynamic and active public space. The current public spaces of Tehran suffer from dysfunctionality of features and lack of coexistence among users which make them unattractive for the young generation. In this age of communication, young generation is looking for new experiences and they are eager to expand their social circle. Despite the rapid changes in social trends over the last few decades, there hasn’t been any significant changes in the design of public spaces of Tehran which is located in a developing country. This study will try to solve this issue by providing a public space that could improve coexistence and understanding of the others.

Main focus of this research is to come up with new features that will support social interaction in public spaces in one of the significant historical streets of Tehran; Valiasr street is a tree-lined street which divides this city into eastern and western parts, which makes it one of the major paths for both pedestrians and motorists. As it was mentioned, there is a great potential for improving the public space of this street. To address this issue, multiple methods of gathering data such as archival information, observation, surveys and crowdsourcing of social media will be used. A part of this study relies on social science to find trends and patterns in people’s behavior. Also historical research has to be used to study the past and present state of the area to develop a design for the future.

The outcome of this study would result in design features for small scaled places that will make a dynamic environment to make young generation pause for a few moments from their daily routines and socialize. My goal is to find answers for the following questions: What kind of experiences make the young generation enthusiastic about social interactions? What factors of place can transform passive users to active ones? What aspects of design makes it possible to spark something among strangers who have no previous history from each other?