PROSPECTS OF WALKABILITY IN CITY NEIGHBORHOODSCASE STUDY: THE CITY CENTER OF ALEXANDRIA

Sustainability, livability and quality of life have become widely discussed issues in the literature of urban planning and design. This study primarily aims to investigate the concept of walkability as a part of livability. To draw a wider theoretical framework for this study, it first seeks to define the terms of ‘livability’ and ‘quality of life’. Then, it focuses on the concept of ‘walkability’ as one of the major components of these terms and as a measurable notion in urban design. Thus, this research seeks to identify a set of indicators of walkability in public spaces to be used for the application which can directly impact on the design quality of urban space. Third, this research focuses on Alexandria city center which has been in the process of deterioration due to various current urban strategies. As the case studies, it examines Saad Zaghloul Street at Ramleh Station District by using the set of walkability measures. It investigates the walkability quality of four different zones of the street, and identifies their walkability capacities, problems and potentials. Finally, it suggests the policy and practical solutions on the design of these public spaces that will not only improve the walkability capacity of this street, but also be helpful for the revitalization of the historic city center

Towards Smarter Management of Overtourism in Historic Centres Through Visitor-Flow Monitoring

Historic centres are highly regarded destinations for watching and even participating in diverse and unique forms of cultural expression. Cultural tourism, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is an important and consolidated tourism sector and its strong growth is expected to continue over the coming years. Tourism, the much dreamt of redeemer for historic centres, also represents one of the main threats to heritage conservation: visitors can dynamize an economy, yet the rapid growth of tourism often has negative effects on both built heritage and the lives of local inhabitants. Knowledge of occupancy levels and flows of visiting tourists is key to the efficient management of tourism; the new technologies—the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and geographic information systems (GIS)—when combined in interconnected networks represent a qualitative leap forward, compared to traditional methods of estimating locations and flows. A methodology is described in this paper for the management of tourism flows that is designed to promote sustainable tourism in historic centres through intelligent support mechanisms. As part of the Smart Heritage City (SHCITY) project, a collection system for visitors is developed. Following data collection via monitoring equipment, the analysis of a set of quantitative indicators yields information that can then be used to analyse visitor flows; enabling city managers to make management decisions when the tourism-carrying capacity is exceeded and gives way to overtourism.Funded by the Interreg Sudoe Programme of the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF

Connecting Community: Capturing and Patterning Orphan Space in Langley Park

Alleys and parking lots provide but a few examples of orphan or "in-between" space--of residual land spawned by 1960s urbanism. These unclaimed spaces have latent qualities, often only visible to a community's inhabitants. These spaces, like all spaces, morph to reflect cultural values and needs. Their difference lies in their residual nature. They allow the disenfranchised to learn, sell, and gather flexibly. They lie in between "valued" and "value-less" space. Modern urban theory fails to address these spaces, instead overlooking the micro-patterning of space. By incorporating these spaces into a careful study of pattern at the scale of the city, community, building, and individual, one can connect a once fragmented community. Langley Park provides the case study for addressing these issues of urbanism, orphan space, and connectivity--it provides an example of capturing, patterning, and connecting orphan space at all scales

The design of a passenger transport interchange terminal in East London, South Africa

The purpose of this document is to look into the concept of Transport Orientated Development through the design of a Passenger Transit Intermodal in East London in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This concept of urban design and development is one which the focus of mixed use development is centered on maximizing access to public transportation. This paper also looks into the discourse around public transportation as an important tool in the integration of cities in post-apartheid South Africa. The aim of this paper is to engage with the architectural challenges of designing an intermodal transportation hub. This paper also aims and engaging the issue of public transportation in a democratic South Africa and its integration in all its forms, which previously may have served only particular demographics of the country i.e. the mini-bus taxi as a solution to the problem of transportation in the townships and its infiltration into the city environment. Through literature, scientific and peer reviewed journals, desktop research, photographs, informal interviews such as analysis, precedence and other qualitative studies, it will be demonstrated, through interpretation of the that there is a need for the integration of public transportation and this can be best achieved through the design of an intermodal passenger transport facility. The finding of this paper is that there is a need to integrate the public transportation sectors in South Africa. The taxi industry, for example, has developed independently of the other means of public transportation i.e. the train and bus systems; and has led to a public transport system that often duplicates or triplicates its functions. In conclusion, public transportation, i.e. trains, buses and minibus axis provide an essential service to the public, especially low income groups as they service a greater portion of this population, offering several benefits such as accessibility ,cost, reduced travel time, etc. Through the design of a transit intermodal, the integration of all forms of public transportation will be shown as being an essential cornerstone to the development of more integrated South African cities in a democratic dispensation

On the performance of social-based and location-aware forwarding strategies in urban vehicular networks

High vehicular mobility in urban scenarios originates inter-vehicles communication discontinuities, a highly important factor when designing a forwarding strategy for vehicular networks. Store, carry and forward mechanisms enable the usage of vehicular networks in a large set of applications, such as sensor data collection in IoT, contributing to smart city platforms. This work evaluates the performance of several location-based and social-aware forwarding schemes through emulations and in a real scenario. Gateway Location Awareness (GLA), a location-aware ranking classification, makes use of velocity, heading angle and distance to the gateway, to select the vehicles with higher chance to deliver the information in a shorter period of time, thus differentiating nodes through their movement patterns. Aging Social-Aware Ranking (ASAR) exploits the social behavior of each vehicle, where nodes are ranked based on a historical contact table, differentiating vehicles with a high number of contacts from those who barely contact with other vehicles. To merge both location and social aforementioned algorithms, a HYBRID approach emerges, thus generating a more intelligent mechanism. For each strategy, we evaluate the influence of several parameters in the network performance, as well as we comparatively evaluate the strategies in different scenarios. Experiment results, obtained both in emulated (with real traces of both mobility and vehicular connectivity from a real city-scale urban vehicular network) and real scenarios, show the performance of GLA, ASAR and HYBRID schemes, and their results are compared to lower- and upper-bounds. The obtained results show that these strategies are a good tradeoff to maximize data delivery ratio and minimize network overhead, while making use of mobile networks as a smart city network infrastructure.publishe

INVESTIGATING COMMERCIAL URBAN CORRIDORS - A PILOT STUDY IN BEIRUT LEBANON

Urban environments are multifaceted, varied, dynamic, complex, and evolving as are the underlying features for human health and wellbeing (Bai, Nath, Capon, Hasan & Jaron, 2020). Healthy and resilient cities can be entry points and platforms for change, adaptation and innovation to achieve optimal health for urban communities and the environment (Regional Framework for Urban Health in the Western Pacific 2016–2020: Healthy and Resilient Cities, 2016). Planners considered urban corridors, which are connection and access between urban districts, as major elements in shaping the city image and forming its identity and investigating them are vital for enhancing healthy and resilient cities. Narrowing the scope on commercial urban corridors, which are a concentration of retail stores that serve a common trade area and lie along a single street (Catherine Dyste, 2012). These corridors can be seen as a dynamic space, but at the same time, they are created to create a range of experiences (Shaban et al., 2018). Improving commercial urban corridors requires several indicators for reviving the companionable and sociable life of a street. Problems occur when space use is not driven. The society therefore uses the urban commercial corridor according to their own interests. This condition may generate conflict between users of the \u27Link\u27 and users of the \u27Space’, may make the corridor an uncomfortable location, and may decreases its livability. Rapid urbanization and unplanned rapid changes of commercial activities in corridors that have an impact on the surrounding streets and users’ activities imposes burdens on surrounding land use and mobility. However, this problem has contributed to various issues such as traffic congestion, pollution, decrease in green areas and degradation of the urban quality of living. That’s why investigating these corridors is imperative to know its utilization and functioning to identify the existing problems and chaos in the corridor since they are facing significant challenges, which is the lack of reliable knowledge on their characteristics and development; important for local authorities to provide wealth of knowledge and data collection. The paper aims to investigate commercial urban corridors to identify and analyze livability aspects and indicators for reviving its companionable and sociable life that can be implemented in a way of a considerable checklist which acts as a systematic structure for communicating the data required, diagnosing issues, and defining the strengths and limitations of the efficiency of a commercial urban corridor to promote a healthy and resilient urban context. To achieve the aim, the research investigates a commercial urban corridor focusing on one of the urban corridors in Beirut, Lebanon. By using Geoportal Interactive Tool, conducted by UN-Habitat and UNICEF to create cartography of the existing conditions of the pilot study, and then analyzes the aspects and indicators of livability based on cartography, walk through analysis and face-to-face interviews with inhabitants in area. After analyzing the commercial urban corridor and identifying the effective indicators, the research resulted in proposing some guidelines for enhancing livability in commercial urban corridors, which were mainly related to the physical aspect since it defines the most inadequate quality and performance

Urban Spine: A Pedestrian-oriented Multi-modal Transportation Infrastructure for Improving Health and Well-being in the Urban Environment

With finite land resources and ever increasing population, urbanization continues to edge natural environments off our maps. The quality of life and well-being is deteriorated with continuous exposure to the urban environment due to the heavy saturation of stress and anxiety that comes with urban living. Stress is associated with the inherent flight-or-fight reaction that humans have developed through evolution in the natural environment. The contamination of stress inducing stimuli in the urban environment has driving people into sedentary lifestyles, remain indoors within the safe confines of building. Mitigating the magnitude of stressful interactions in the urban landscape, many which are caused by automobiles, will encourage a return to the outdoor environment. The re-integration of naturalistic experiences into the environment will improve the quality of urban life. A shift of the urban landscape toward a pedestrian-orientation, through the promotion of walkability, can ameliorate the adverse impacts caused by automobile centric behavior and cultivate the streetscape as a canvas for experiencing naturalistic features and characteristics that support the health and well-being of the urban dweller – not only ensuring survival but granting the opportunity to flourish