Proposal Model for A Community-friendly Wetland Park in Egypt: A Social approach.

Abstract

As community engagement is considered the key to a successful project outcome, it was necessary to change the general attitude dealing with main ecosystem projects such as Wetlands from just being producers supporting primary industries to community-friendly projects providing urban spaces with recreational, educational and ecological facilities and assuring high quality of life. Wetland parks play a vital role for the benefit of its communities. This paper focuses on social aspects and values in designing Wetland parks; it emphasizes the importance of involving community groups to overcome various difficulties and challenges of these projects’ existence. The paper aims to create a design model that achieves a community-friendly Wetland Park; a social guiding model that raises community awareness, participation and ensures sustainability of such projects. A theoretical design guideline review on parks and Wetlands is being presented to provide the basis for the design model and for a community-oriented questionnaire. The paper addresses decision-makers and urban designers in Egypt providing social guidelines to engage local groups in early stages of design. The paper then directs the questionnaire survey to com-munity groups to attain the proposed design model for a community-friendly Wetland Park in Egypt that paves the way for long-term development.