Spatial Delight by Third Places in the Vernacular Cities

Abstract

In vernacular cities. People are the ones who make their places, such as housing and work, and their entertainment places as third places in which various activities are held. Vernacular cities are unplanned and informal patterns, suffering from the poor determination of the emergence of third places, with a poor appreciation of their role in achieving spatial delight which represents the feeling of (happiness, comfort, Benefit, and beauty) in the place. The paper's question was, where and how do the residents of vernacular cities spend their free time? The paper focuses on the absence of perception of the third place's role to achieve spatial delight in those cities. The hypothesis was that the third place is the basis for achieving the urban spatial delight known as those public places where optional activities are held, generating joy for the residents. It assumed that the spatial delight rate is the quotient of dividing the sum of the third places with their optional activities into the dwelling units in vernacular cities. The paper highlights the importance of presenting contributions to measuring spatial delight in minds of people, which is created by the third place and its events. It used descriptive and Empirical approaches, and the hypothesis was tested through the old Kadhimiya city in Baghdad/Iraq. The paper concluded that spatial delight can be measured in terms of the third place, as the higher the three places, the greater the delight rate. The paper found that the rate of spatial delight depends on the nature of optional activities and the number of times that visit those places by people. In addition, it found that the vernacular old Kadhimiya city was almost identical to the proportion of recreational use in the modern residential areas.