Urban Accessibility as a Supplementary Urban Upgrading Approach, Towards More Sustainable Urban Poverty Areas

Abstract

Urban poverty areas (UPA’s) include diverse types of urban areas that have variety in their urban and architectural characteristics; however, all UPAs suffer from low quality of urban life. Moreover, the remote and marginalized sites of these areas are a common significant defect. The dwellers in these areas face the problem of poor accessibility to other parts of the city and sometimes inside the UPA itself, due to natural and artificial barriers such as the topography, the water bodies, the absence of public transportation and in most cases due to the inadequate urban characteristics of the street networks and the transit infrastructure. The argument of this study is that urban accessibility has a key role in the enhancement of the quality of urban life in the case of UPAs. Urban accessibility acts as a supplementary approach alongside other common approaches to urban upgrading in UPAs. The methodology adopted in this research relies on an analytical comparative review of actual UPAs from Brazil and Egypt from an urban accessibility perspective, which showed the positive impact of providing a good urban accessibility on the quality of urban life. The results represent lessons from practice that showed how a good urban accessibility in a UPA can contribute to a more sustainable urban community. Furthermore, it was clear that urban accessibility needs to be integrated with the other common approaches of urban upgrading as it acts as a supplementary approach. The study also clarified the pivotal role of using public transportation systems and pedestrian networks as urban solutions in the achievement of a good urban accessibility.