Toward enhancing Jeddah city image

Abstract

Streets are one of the important parts of the city’s public realm where they represent most of the cities outdoor. In the urban design literature, most of the urbanists had agreed that maintaining a good street quality is associated with positive city image and better standards of living. Throughout the history, commercial streets are considered as one of the dominant types of urban streets, where they represent the city’s vibrant axis and play a significant role in manifesting the image of the city. With the implication of the rapid growth that Jeddah had faced, this had brought many accumulated issues regarding the design of the public realm and commercial streets. This had contributed to the shortage of adequate ordinance to regulate the visual appearance and functionality of Jeddah’s commercial streets. This had created a visually overloaded and uncomfortable street environment that is associated with negative impacts on the citizen's wellbeing. Therefore, this research aimed to create an assessment tool to investigate the user’s perception in the commercial streets of Jeddah. The main goal of this research is to conclude with recommendations to enhance the image and the visual quality of Jeddah’s commercial streets to improve the city image and the societies wellbeing. In order to design the research assessment tool, the research follows a qualitative scientific methodology by reviewing the theoretical literature about the research scope and analyzing international and regional case studies of street enhancement tools. To validate the assessment tool, the research will employ a structural survey for the experts. Also, the research will conduct a case study in Heraa street in Jeddah to investigate the problem by employing user survey and site observation. Further, a set of recommendation was proposed to uplift the visual quality and the public image of Jeddah’s commercial streets. That will help to maintain a positive city image and will foster the self-esteem and sense of belonging of Jeddah’s citizens