Redefining Heritage Public Spaces for Cultural Events through the Use of GIS Technology: The Case of El Azhar Street-Cairo

Abstract

“When public spaces are successful […] they will increase opportunities to participate in communal activity”, (Carr, Francis, Rivlin, & Stone, 1993). The city of Cairo has an enormous number of liveable streets that welcomes cultural events; however, many of such streets lack the design principles that sustain and enhance the occurrence of those events. Trials to investigate and upgrade the urban design of cultural urban spaces have different approaches; one of those new approaches is using Geographic Information System (GIS). The paper aims to evaluate the adequacy of Al-Azhar Street to accommodate cultural events, using GIS, through determining the physical elements of street design that define its functions to foster cultural events and investigating the mutual relationship between cultural events and heritage street design. Al-Azhar Street was selected as one of the main urban spaces in Cairo that witnesses many cultural events throughout the year, while the design of the street doesn‟t help in smoothly hosting such events. The research followed an observational field study approach and adopted the GIS as a pilot tool. GIS facilitated creating the needed database for cultural heritage streets, based on a criteria developed by the researchers in relation to international standards reviewed and qualitative data gathered from site observations and inserted. Then, a quantitative analysis of the results of the case study was done using the weighted sum approach. Finally, the research concluded that cultural events are not recommended to take place on 48% of the area of study and highlighted the urban design dimensions that need to be reconsidered to house cultural events on the street smoothly, which proved the efficiency of using GIS.