This thesis focuses on social interactions of ‘everyday life’ in public spaces along the water’s edge environment, including the waterfront and beachfront of Anzali-Port, the Caspian Sea in Iran. By doing so, this research desires to understand what the social potential of water’s edge environment is. Through proactive approaches of ‘spatial-ethnography’ to respond to ‘where’ and ‘how’ this social interaction occurs in various public settings. On the other hand, the trends of contemporary design of public spaces are going to create ‘placeless’ and ‘exclusionary’ places. Thesis argues such places can bring new knowledge on the role of urban design and landscape architecture for shaping public life and social behaviour which often this social behaviour extracts from indigenous culture. Moreover, the dynamics of ‘everyday life’ has been focused of diverse studies of anthropology, urban geography and sociology. However, the focus of ‘everyday life’ at intersection of urban design, landscape architecture and human environmental studies has been rarely investigated. This gap requires us to apply an innovative methodology for picturing the public life and behaviour. Methodologically, this research initiated extensive field work, applying a mixed-method qualitative approach in empirical research for addressing the three objectives and relevant research questions. Data were conducted through extensive behavioural mapping, in-situ photography, time-lapse filming and in-depth interviews to examine where and how do people use and perceive their everyday life in public spaces to make a set of recommendation for re-conceptualising and well-accepted design to inform new insights in urban design theories and practice for future contemporary design of public spaces. By investigating case study sites in both, old (waterfront) and new (beachfront) masterplanned neighbourhoods in Anzali city centre and Anzali Free Trade Zone in the countryside, the findings of ‘spatially-coded’ data in qualitative GIS mapping illustrate that social encounters do arise in various public spaces. They also, do influence to the type, rhythms and frequency of uses based on other aspects (age and gender). The findings also propose that more consideration requires about the presence of Patogh spaces which I called ‘Miani spaces’ and identified them with a new term ‘fixed meeting spaces’ while such spaces advocated the idea of ‘fourth places’ and categorised ‘in-betweenness’ in terms of level of social encounters in spaces (macro, micro, in-between), time and create ‘a great sense of publicness’. The recognition of these findings challenges urban design theories, extends the notion of ‘fourth places’ and redefines the ‘spatial novelty’ under conditions of various spatial and natural features in public spaces. The findings of participant narratives in urban experiences, preferences and use of public spaces critique the ideals of equality which can be alive in democratic societies, by increasing the boundaries of gender segregation.
