Investigating the relationship between neighborhood urban design and sick neighborhood syndrome

Abstract

The neighborhood has become the focus of attraction of urban planners, designers, and architects. Over the last two decades, the field of study of the neighborhood and its relationship with health has witnessed an explosion of interest. Several researchers investigated neighborhood problems and its impacts on well-being. Different urban problems vary in mental and physical health impacts. Lots of cross-sectional researches linked the characteristics of neighborhood whether physical or social to the health condition of the community. Furthermore, heart disease, skin disorder, cancer diabetes, depression, and drug use are some of the health problems that an individual might face while living in an insufficient neighborhood particularly in harsh climate conditions. In a desert climate, thermal bad performance can lead to urban problems such as the well-known phenomenon "Urban Heat Island (UHI)". The later can lead to several illness syndromes for residents. Reviewing the literature revealed a gap in the knowledge of the detailed relationship between urban design elements and sick health syndrome. The thesis aims to build a framework of the neighborhood design elements and its interconnection with illness syndromes. Similar to the Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), the paper introduces a new term which is “Sick Neighborhood Syndrome” (SNS). This research follows the scientific approach with multi- research methods. The study follows three steps. These are: analytical literature review, record fact from the field, and numerical analysis. The analytical literature review is done to collect data and information to build a framework about neighborhood urban design and its relationship with sick neighborhood syndrome. A selected district from Jeddah is investigated and analyzed through recording facts from the field. Observation and survey are the main tools of the field study. Furthermore, the numerical analysis is the last step that employees different software, these are Space—syntax, and Envi-met. This aids the research to reach its final results and to validate the relationship between neighborhood design elements and sick syndromes. The research includes five main chapters (Table1-1). Chapter one introduces the entire thesis. Chapter two and three review and analyze the literature to achieve the second objective of the thesis “build a theoretical framework of neighborhood elements and sick neighborhood syndrome”. Chapter four focuses on the field study and the numerical analysis. Chapter five summarize the results and set some recommendations for government design makers and urban designers. V Al-shati district in Jeddah was selected for the field study. The research relies on subjective assessment and the numerical analysis to analyze the case study. Space-syntax and En-vimet are employed for the analysis. Space-syntax examines the accessibility, connectivity, and walkability in the neighborhood, while Envi-met examines the environmental features. Two clusters in Al- shati district are examined to compare and investigate the effect of the built environment on neighborhood performance. The survey results confirmed the analysis results of numerical analysis. Also, it explores the life habits and health of the residents and its relation to the thermal and built environment. Two forms of survey were used, one for experts and another one for the neighborhood residents