DEFENSIBLE URBAN SPACE IN BAHRAIN

Abstract

All defensible urban space design has a common purpose, which is to restructure the physical layouts of communities to allow residents to control the areas around their buildings by natural surveillance. Those physical layouts include buildings, streets, grounds outside their buildings, the walkways, lighting poles, drainages and all the infrastructure facilities, which may help people to improve their local neighborhoods. This paper concentrates on the defensible urban space design in the neighborhoods particularly in Bahrain either in the privately owned neighborhoods or in neighborhoods with government ownerships. The research first examines the theoretical aspects and theories and design principles related to neighborhood design with emphasis on elements such as walkways, buildings layouts, road networks, building’s entrances and other important elements. Those elements can be designed to help create safe and secure neighborhoods. This first part of the research reviews the theoretical background on defensible urban space design forming a basis to analyze and evaluate the built environmental elements in the case studies. In the second part of the research, these ideas are applied by means of a descriptive and questionnaire survey. In the descriptive analysis, the research looks at safety and security prevailing in residential built environments of Bahrain. It focuses on different built-environmental aspects which can be considered to lead to safety problems. In addition, the questionnaire survey looks at the ways in which the Bahrain community assesses the security situation. By these means, it identifies the factors that negatively affect the sense of security in residential settlements of Bahrain. Finally, the research produces a set of conclusions and recommendations to help improve the urban planning process followed by the governmental agencies, towards creating a safe Bahraini community.