Bridges Over the Nile. Transportation Corridors Transformed into Public Spaces

Abstract

Cairo is a congested city with high rate of urbanization and very limited public space. Cairo has one of the lowest rates of parkland per capita of any major city. Moreover, the banks of the Nile, formerly alive with activities such as washing, fishing, and felucca landings, were by the end of the twentieth century largely cutoff from free public access by a wall of busy roads, private clubs, luxury hotels, restaurants, nurseries, and police/military stations, roads. The need for open space for people from lower income who could not afford the expensive options along the Nile banks, has resulted in use of the sidewalks of the main bridges as public spaces. Families, couples, and friends tolerate the noise and fumes of traffic to enjoy the expansive views and breezes over the Nile. As a result of this extraordinary re-purposing of the bridges, new small businesses have formed to cater to the uses, and a new interaction with the river has emerged. We studied the patterns of use, characteristics of the user population, and stated preferences of users. We identify a set of characteristics contributing to the popularity of the bridges as public space, including affordability, accessibility, openness to the river and visual connection with the other bank. We propose that these characteristics be taken into account when developing future projects along the river water front to address the need for public space and access to the Nile.

The Fit of Urban Waterfront Interventions: Matters of Size, Money and Function

“…We conducted a literature review on urban waterfront interventions, and drew upon our experience analyzing such projects in a range of settings, in Europe, North and South America, Asia and North Africa, often including collaboration with local experts (e.g., Kondolf et al 2010 [8], Kondolf et al 2011 [9], Pinto et al 2011 [10], Gonçalves et al 2016 [11], Pinto et al 2018 [12], Wantzen et al 2019 [13], Gohar and Kondolf 2020 [14]). Our literature review focused on five criteria, namely:…”

Constructing an Analytical-based Model for User Satisfaction towards Under Bridge Spaces within the Egyptian Urban Fabric

“…Some assessment approaches were quantitative, like the Analytical Hierarchy method [30] [31], and others were qualitative. However, the joint assessment was qualitative, focusing on the integration of bridge construction and the impact of developed spaces nearby by the community [4] [10] [23] [37]. Most of the assessment criteria have been generally developed based on the criteria developed for open spaces, such as the public space index [29], user preference as an assessment tool [33], vulnerability assessment [34], assessing the design of transport infrastructure and public spaces considering human behavior [35], integrating agent-based modeling, serious gaming, and co-design for planning transport infrastructure and public spaces [36].…”

“…As shown in figure 7, the accessibility/traffic influence attribute has been represented by: the availability of public transportation links, parking areas, pedestrian and car flow, and the availability of convenient sidewalks that aligned to the nearby traffic [41] [42]. Under-bridge spaces could sometimes be a center for anti-safe destinations due to space light, lack of security, and physical space design [37] [33]. Occupying these spaces with meaningful functions could improve this.…”