The quality of urban public space in general, and urban plazas in particular, has been a concern and a major challenge for designers in setting rules and principles to its layout and its design; functional and aesthetic. Environmental and behavioural research contributes importantly to the understanding of the interaction between user and space, to well respond to users' real needs; and to have design grounded in social understanding. In pertinent literature, it is common to argue that the most important measures of the success of an open space is attributed to its location, design, and use. In this matter, space syntax provides theory and method to analyse the correlation between spatial properties and people behaviour; understanding this interaction helps in design, with improved design leading to more functional places. This paper instigates from the assumption that human behaviour in space is highly dependent on visibility generated by the built environment configuration, and it aims to look into the correlation between the use of space and spatial quantitative measures, i.e. the syntactic properties of an urban plaza. It also aims to look into how to integrate space syntax analysis as a tool in the plaza layout design process. This work will be carried out on the analysis and the design proposal of the most frequented public place in Biskra, Algeria, "El-Houria plaza". The analysis process consists of overlapping space syntax method (Depthmap), behaviour mapping and various qualitative analysis techniques such as questionnaire and mental mapping. The results show that plaza spatial use is highly dependent on visibility and that the accessibility (visual access) and the connectivity to the surrounding are the key parameters to its functioning. The results also indicate that there is a high correlation between the human behaviour and the syntactic properties in selecting places to do definite activities. Furthermore, it is shown how visibility becomes the principal feature in the layout proposal of this plaza.

Abstract:The research aims to understand the relationship between the popularity and attractiveness of commercial buildings, shopping malls and any relationship with visitor satisfaction. This would assist in designing new malls or commercial buildings, predict their degree of popularity, and help achieve both higher revenue resulting from increasing the number of visitors and their satisfaction, comfort and enjoyment of the space. This study will focus on the relationship between shopping mall popularity and wayfinding. Planned and unplanned visits to some specific areas inside the malls will be considered. These areas are: 1-Facilities: prayer rooms, and washrooms, etc.; 2-The largest areas in size and often with the highest number of visitors: food courts, cinemas, play areas; and 3-ATM machines. The objective of this paper is to verify three hypotheses: 1. The popularity of a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with wayfinding in the mall; 2. The popularity of a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with the location of facilities in the mall; 3. The location of facilities in a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with wayfinding in the mall. Surveys were conducted in the city of Abu Dhabi and the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was used to verify these hypotheses.

Open spaces provided in mass housing schemes is considered as one of largest issues in public mass housing, and their use by the inhabitants has been a concern and a topic of interest of many fields, where the focus is on inhabitant behavior in space according to either inhabitant/inhabitant or inhabitant/space relation. This open space constitutes a structuring space for the large housing estates, by the ties that connect between the buildings that compose it and the inhabitants who use it. Amongst the various deficiencies that mass housing schemes particular present today is the inability of promoting successful open spaces, which is mainly reflected by patterns of their use, therefore produce an abandoned, deserted, and degraded spaces, this is generally an indication that something is wrong with their layout design, in this regard, this paper revolves around the use of open public space in the 1000 collective housing units in the city of Biskra (Algeria), which provides a variety of open spaces forms, hence; to know how the spatial configuration and the site organization affect the way spaces are used by the inhabitants, based on the hypothesis that the use of open public spaces in mass housing is intimately linked to the visual fields produced by the spatial configuration. The analysis process draws on two methods, an observation in-situ to explore why in the neighbourhood, some parts are more occupied and more preferred by people than others, using the technique of behavioural mapping, i.e. people counting and spatial use mapping, taking into consideration three age groups (children, adults, elderly), further to look for links between visibility and spatial use, a syntactic analysis is carried out to analyze visibility properties using Depthmap software. The results of this study indicate that the visual factor, the buildings arrangements, and the site organization in the mass housing substantially affect the use and the quality of their open spaces.

Urban morphology should carefully consider climatic and behavioural aspects for hot arid climates. To put these insights into practice, this study aims to investigate different urban environments in the hot, dry city of Sidi Okba, Algeria (Biskra) during the summer season and defines the upper and lower limits of the thermal comfort range for the PET index. A second aim is to quantify the walkable environment and highlight the relationship between urban morphology and walking behaviour. The study was based on physical measurements combined with a questionnaire survey and a walking audit instrument. The findings from this research show that urban morphology, defined by building density, height/width (H/W) ratio and tree density, is significantly associated with the outdoor thermal conditions and potential pedestrians over short distances. The study also shows that in order to provide a comfortable climate and to increase pedestrian choice in the urban environment, the public space should include high building density, combined with deep streets with a high connection between them, and a large amount of vegetation along the lower parts of streets. This type of design has a positive effect on the walkability score of public spaces.

This paper studies the accessibility of open spaces and facilities and the integration of streets to the whole urban system of the Emirati neighbourhood of the Business District of the Abu Dhabi 2030 Master Plan. For this purpose, axial lines were produced by applying space syntax theory, Depthmap software. The research aims to verify the location of open spaces and facilities, such as schools, in relation to the location of public transportation stops (bus, metro and tram), in order to check their accessibility within walking distances. The objective is to pay attention to the relationship between land use and transportation in the planning phase for future interventions or proposals, in other words, to improve the accessibility of public spaces or buildings by pedestrians in order to comply with the vision of the Abu Dhabi 2030 Master Plan and its promotion of walkability and cycling. Although many measures will be taken at the scale of urban design to provide shaded open spaces and sidewalks, saving pedestrians from walking long distances shall be done in the planning phase, the challenge remains to create a micro climate to increase the ease of walking in the heat and decrease dependence on cars for mobility.