Role of Local Festivals in Promoting Social Interactions and Shaping Urban Spaces Rasha Moussa Assistant Professor, Effat Collage of Architecture and Design, Effat University, Saudi Arabia Correspondence Email: ramoussa@effatuniversity.edu.sa Abstract: Urban Spaces have played an important role in people's psychological life and in their integration with environment, as it is the mediator between people and their environment. Despite its importance, many communities suffer from the absence of positive communication between people and place. And this lead the governments to seek for a solution and they found that events can be used as a tool of enhancing the social engagement as they can reach a broad swathe of the population and have potential social benefits, like offering celebrations and building social networks within communities. In addition, they can help in build cohesive communities, offer employment opportunities and attract visitors to destination. More recently, there has been a focus on their ability to deliver social or political messages to audiences. Festivals are considered the most effective patronize for social formats impact on the spatial formation, since the human is the main sponsor for forming the spaces that contain all the events that may be specific or temporary, thus it was essential to show physical and non-physical components for space formation in order to gain access to identify the reciprocal relationship between people and place and highlight the successful spatial expressions that help boost the spirit of communication between people and develop a sense of place. The paper seeks for identifying the relation between people and urban spaces and how the dynamics of social life shaped the special spatial arrangements created. An analytical study was formed by observing the varieties of social behaviours occur within the urban spaces and analysing the reflection of these behaviours on the transformation of this space during local festivals. The results shows how the spatial setting and structure of the place can organize and control these relations and can contribute the feeling of belonging. Keywords: Urban Spaces, Festival, Social Interactions, Human Behaviours, Enclosure, Centrality, Axiality, Permeability and Connectivity 1. Introduction Nowadays urban festivals have become an attractive topic to most of the cities and their number has risen in recent decades (Gursoy et al,2004), as local authorities and stakeholders are convinced that through these events the image of the cities can be improved and make them more vibrant and cosmopolitan in order to generate economic benefits (Saayman and Saayman,2006). Whereas several cities consider festivals as part of the urban regeneration thrust and place promotion activities, others are trying to raise their profile by organizing or hosting special events and annual festival (Herrero et al,2006). In the past, the aim of festivals was to transgress boundaries of prevalent social and political order, but nowadays some cities harness festivals for more market-oriented purposes. Local authorities found that these events have become an economic key itself and make an essential contribution to the urban economy as they raise the value of properties and attract commercial development.