A Socio-ecological Approach to Assessing Physical Activities in Public Open Spaces of Alexandria City, Egypt

Public open spaces are the main attractive areas for people, to practice physical activities, and interact with their surrounding social as well as physical (natural and man-made) environment. Socio-ecological approach is found to be the most applicable approach to examine and measure the various aspects affecting physical activities within public open spaces. The research focused on Alexandria, Egypt, and the study area selected was Pharoas area near old city centre of Alexandria. A field research has been conducted using on-site and online Questionnaire. Statistical analysis was produced to analyse the findings using SPSS statistics software. The results showed that the main factors influencing public open spaces location selection choices were the social environment factors, followed by physical environment factors, then the time taken to reach selected public open space. Physical activities were found to be affected the most by the time spent in the public open space