As urban spaces embraces public life of the city and continuously reflect the complexity of its cultural, social and economic conditions. This study traces the changes in Sanandaj's public spaces using narrative approach. For this, first narrative descriptions of the city's history are prepared based on the formal and non-formal stories stated by interviewees, and then public spaces of the city identified regarding the principles obtained from literature review. Theoretical framework of this study is based on the physical and functional characteristics of the public spaces which can be defined in terms of physical and activity pattern of public spaces. Thus, all the principles outlined in this framework will be discussed in the case of sanandaj's public spaces. In conclusion, changes in the physical and activity patterns in contemporary and traditional public space of Sanandaj have been compared with each other. The results show that most of the contemporary public spaces of the city lack many of the principles obtained from the literature review. On the contrary, the traditional public spaces contained most of those principles. In addition, the general nature of the traditional public spaces transformed architecturally and socially into a more circumscribed and regulated place with the advent of modernization and consumer-oriented capitalism in Sanandaj.
