Humanising Commercial Streets as a Tool for Social Sustainability

Abstract

Commercial Streets are the beating heart of any city, the hubs of leisure, business, and social gatherings, in which they also reflect cultures and be used to assess the level of well-being of citizens. Recently, due to the world population increase and other various factors, such as excessive urbanism and the domination of vehicle movement over pedestrianization rights, some commercial streets suffer from dehumanisation causes and symptoms. Those vary between substandard planning and construction, inhospitable landscaping, and excessive visual pollution, among other causes and symptoms. Thus, this research investigates various Humanisation strategies adopted worldwide. It discusses the potential of applying technological, spatial/physical, and social strategies to (re)Humanise commercial streets, using Othman Ibn Affan Street in Heliopolis as an applied case study. It suggests a rating system that could be adopted to measure the standard expected qualities of commercial streets. The research follows a mixed-method approach and uses various research tools, such as literature review, archival, critical analysis, observation study, and survey questionnaire to achieve its aim, which is creating a theoretical framework to achieve the Humanisation qualities in commercial streets. Through a critical discussion, the research determines in its developed framework that a combination of several defined Humanisation qualities is needed to (re)create Humanised commercial streets.