Urban signs, as symbolic elements of collective memory, play a significant role in representing the historical identity of cities and shaping citizens’ perceptions of the urban environment. Cities are not merely physical settings composed of buildings, streets, squares, and infrastructure; they are also complex repositories of meanings, memories, experiences, and symbolic representations. Within this context, urban signs can function as mediators between the physical environment and the cognitive and cultural processes through which citizens understand and interpret urban space. By representing historical events, shared values, collective experiences, and culturally significant narratives, these signs contribute to the continuity of collective memory and provide opportunities for citizens to establish connections between the historical past and contemporary urban experience. In particular, signs associated with war and conflict may acquire a distinctive role because they represent events that have influenced collective identity, spatial structure, and historical consciousness. Therefore, understanding how such signs are perceived and incorporated into citizens’ mental representations is important for urban studies and urban design.

The relationship between urban signs and citizens’ mental images is particularly significant because people do not perceive cities as collections of isolated physical elements. Rather, they organize environmental information through cognitive processes and construct mental representations of places based on physical characteristics, spatial relationships, meanings, experiences, memories, and perceptual qualities. From this perspective, urban signs can strengthen the legibility and recognizability of particular places while communicating historical and cultural meanings. They may therefore contribute to the formation of a meaningful mental image of the city, especially when they are spatially integrated with their surrounding environment and connected to recognizable urban structures. In this regard, urban signs can facilitate the reinterpretation and perceptual reconstruction of recent wars by transforming historical events into visible, spatially embedded, and culturally interpretable elements of the contemporary city.

In the context of Tehran, the Twelve-Day War and the Ramadan War provide important cases for examining how war-related urban signs are incorporated into citizens’ perceptions and mental representations of the city. These events represent different layers of war-related memory and provide an opportunity to investigate how historical and contemporary experiences of conflict can be represented through the urban environment. Their importance lies not only in the physical presence of commemorative or symbolic elements, but also in the ways citizens recognize, interpret, remember, and assign meaning to these elements within Tehran’s broader spatial and cultural structure. Accordingly, the present research considers war-related urban signs as part of an interconnected system in which physical form, spatial organization, cultural identity, symbolic meaning, lived experience, and environmental perception interact in shaping citizens’ mental images.

Accordingly, the main research question is: How do urban signs associated with the Twelve-Day War and the Ramadan War in Tehran contribute to the formation of citizens’ mental images, and which components influence this process? The present study is applied in terms of its purpose and descriptive–analytical in terms of its methodological nature. It seeks not only to identify individual characteristics of war-related urban signs but also to determine broader conceptual dimensions explaining their relationship with citizens’ mental images. Thus, the study moves from individual observable indicators toward an integrated understanding of the spatial, cultural, semantic, experiential, and perceptual mechanisms involved in representing war within the contemporary urban environment.

In the first stage, based on theoretical foundations concerning urban signs, collective memory, environmental perception, mental image, place identity, spatial organization, and previous studies, 40 indicators related to war-related urban signs and citizens’ mental images were identified and operationalized. These indicators represented different aspects of the relationship between citizens and the urban environment, including physical characteristics, cultural and identity-related attributes, spatial relationships, environmental legibility, meaning, experience, memory, interpretation, and perceptual processes. They were incorporated into a structured questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. Research data were collected through questionnaires distributed among 200 citizens who possessed sufficient experience and knowledge of urban spaces to evaluate and interpret the relevant signs and spatial characteristics.

It should be emphasized that exposure to war in this study does not refer to citizens’ direct or firsthand experience of wartime events. Rather, it refers to their cognitive and perceptual encounter with urban signs, spaces, representations, and environmental elements associated with war. This distinction is important because the study focuses on the ways in which the urban environment mediates the memory and perception of war-related events, rather than on the psychological consequences of direct exposure to warfare. Thus, war is examined as a socially and spatially represented phenomenon that can be perceived, interpreted, and reconstructed through the urban environment. The focus is therefore placed on the relationship between urban representation and cognitive perception rather than on individual psychological responses to traumatic events.

To analyze the collected data, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was employed using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) extraction method and Varimax rotation in SPSS. This procedure was used to identify the underlying conceptual structure among the 40 indicators and determine the major dimensions through which war-related urban signs contribute to citizens’ mental images. Factor analysis enabled the research to examine relationships among indicators and reduce the observed variables into a smaller number of interpretable conceptual factors. The factor-analytic approach consequently moved beyond individual indicators and identified broader, interconnected dimensions underlying citizens’ perceptions of war-related urban environments.

The findings indicate that the conceptual structure of war-related urban signs can be explained through four principal factors. The first factor emphasizes the physical, cultural, and identity-related dimensions of urban spaces. This dimension highlights the role of physical characteristics, cultural meanings, and place identity in shaping how citizens recognize and interpret war-related urban signs. The findings suggest that physical characteristics cannot be separated from cultural and identity-related meanings attached to places. Material form, when combined with cultural references and identity-related associations, can strengthen the recognizability and symbolic significance of war-related signs. Therefore, their effectiveness depends not only on visual presence but also on integration with the identity and character of their location.

The second factor represents spatial relationships and environmental legibility. It reflects the extent to which organization, connectivity, spatial configuration, hierarchy, and readability of urban environments facilitate citizens’ recognition, interpretation, and mental representation of war-related spaces and signs. A sign that is visible but poorly integrated into its spatial context may have limited influence on forming a coherent mental image. In contrast, when signs are positioned within recognizable routes, nodes, landmarks, districts, or other meaningful spatial structures, they can be more easily incorporated into citizens’ cognitive maps. This finding reinforces the importance of spatial context and demonstrates that the meaning and perceptual effectiveness of an urban sign partly depend on its relationship with surrounding spaces.

The third factor encompasses meaning, lived experience, and meaning-making processes. It emphasizes that the significance of war-related urban signs is not determined solely by physical presence or visual characteristics, but is also constructed through citizens’ experiences, interpretations, memories, and interactions with the urban environment. Urban signs can operate as carriers of meanings that connect collective memories of past events with contemporary experiences of place. Their interpretation may vary according to cultural context, previous experiences, spatial familiarity, and meanings associated with a location. The urban environment therefore functions as an active medium through which historical narratives can be continuously interpreted and reconstructed rather than as a passive container of historical information.

Taken together, the four factors demonstrate that citizens’ mental images of war-related urban signs are formed through the interaction of physical, cultural, spatial, semantic, experiential, and perceptual dimensions. From an urban design perspective, war-related signs should be considered not as isolated commemorative objects, but as components of a system of meaning and collective memory. Their effectiveness depends on integration with the urban fabric, spatial relationships, place identity, and citizens’ experiences. The findings provide an analytical framework for understanding how the urban environment can mediate the interpretation of wars and connect historical memory with contemporary urban life. This perspective can support context-sensitive approaches to representing events in Tehran.