Zohreh Torabi - Ph. D. Department of Architecture, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran.
Yalda Sima - M.Sc. Student of Urban Planning, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran.

Identity, a series of traits and characteristics that makes a person or a member of the community come to a kind of recognition about individuals and other communities; The city also, following the example of this criterion gains character and gets independent. Identity in the city, through the creation and association with public memories of citizens causes the sense of interest and dependence which leads the inhabitants of the city toward becoming a citizen, which is a more active level of being just inhabitants. Although the identity is the effect of the culture of its citizens, it affects the process of becoming a citizen and cancause the formulation of criteria related to the participation and judging of observers and residents. Urban identity is a reflection of all the local people’s traditions, culture and aspirations grouped together. It reflects their needs, successes, failures and future. Constricted, the city is understood and interpreted through the technical rather than the sensory, yet it is the sensory from which people build their feeling and emotion. Sensuous requirements may coincide or conflict with other demands but cannot be separated from them in designing or judging urban spaces. The static physical setting, activities and meaning constituted three basic elements of urban identity places. Since place identity is a sub-structure of the self-identity of person consisting of broadly conceived cognitions about the world in which the individual lives. These cognitions represent memories, ideas, values, meanings and conceptions of behavior and experience. This study investigates and compares basic elements of urban identity in Zanjan city entrances with using Analytical Hierarchy Process Method and the proposed recommendations for the increase identity.

Identity, Urban Identity, Elements of the urban identity, Entrance, AHP1 method