USERS' PERCEPTIONS OF HOLY PUBLIC SPACES IN THE HOLY CITY OF MAKKAH

Abstract

From the first human settlements, public spaces were connected to the people and dominated their activities and the urban lifestyle. Recently, many studies have been undertaken to enhance the public spaces in modern city, and placemaking is the most used method to enhance the public spaces that align with the users’ needs. The public spaces around the Grand Mosque in Makkah have worked in multiple ways to enhance the profile of the Grand Mosque and the Sacred Places in the Holy City of Makkah since the time of rebuilding the Kaabah until the present day. Also, the Holy City of Makkah has become one of the most important religious, economic, commercial, and social cities and the estimated number of visitors to the Holy City of Makkah will be around 30 million by the year 2030. Moreover, recently the disappearance of public open places in the Holy City of Makkah, especially in the urban center and around the Grand Mosque, led to the disappearance of activities by visitors-and residents, turning the open spaces into generally transit areas. The study considered two types of activities, holiness activity and public activity. This research is aimed at creating parameters to enhance the Holy Public Spaces around the Grand Mosque by considering the users ‘needs in public spaces while addressing the Sense of Holiness. This study adopted an exploratory and explanatory approach to better comprehend the historical development of these areas and to investigate the user's perception of the Holy Public Spaces. The first step in the process of study is to identify the existing conditions of the public spaces and the issues that exist within it. A Holy Space Making framework was later developed through a systematic literature review to evaluate the public spaces in the holy city by taking into account the possible influential factors that might affect the users in the public spaces through readapted place-making factors and the Sense of Holiness. This is followed by the use of a quantitative approach, collecting data from 433 people of various nationalities by simple random sampling method who had been to the Holy City of Makkah to either do Umrah or Hajj. This research used social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook together with emails to disseminate this questionnaire. SPSS was used to do the statistical analysis of the data based on the Likert scale. Based on the results, it is evident that the quality of public spaces in the Holy City of Makkah significantly impacts its users’ public attitude and productivity. This research highlights the meaning and the factors that may enhance these public spaces. The findings indicates that users relate faithfulness, holiness, privacy with sanctity while identity attachment, sense of place, peace and character to place attachment. The findings of this research have wide implications for fields where the concept of a holy public place is significant. This research is a crucial milestone in gathering empirical information on the creation of Holy Public Space-Making that takes into account the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs and perceptions of users to improve the quality of life in these spaces. It is recommended that further emphasis be given to understanding the functions of open spaces in places in Islamic countries which are identified and recognized as Holy.