Can Public Spaces Alleviate Poverty-Related Feelings? Content Analysis of Vision 2030 and Egyptian Residents’ Storytelling

Abstract

This study argues that Vision 2030 and social housing should consider the elements of the sociocultural dimension of urban design (SDUD) to alleviate urban poverty-induced feelings. By examining public spaces in the context of Vision 2030 and the implementation of social housing projects, this study aims to provide a theoretical framework that may assist city policymakers in rethinking the role of public spaces in alleviating poverty-related feelings. A review of the relevant literature explores the SDUD elements and builds an index to measure poverty through bibliometric and content analysis. This index was used to analyze the gaps in Vision 2030 in South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt, which we randomly chose. It focused on SDUD elements, social housing, and public spaces. We empirically examined the role of public spaces in alleviating poverty-related feelings using the SDUD index. We applied episodic narrative and interview-based storytelling techniques to a limited group of poor residents in the Al Asmarat Housing Project in Mokattam, Cairo, Egypt. This interview discusses the role of public spaces in reducing poverty-related feelings. The results focus on exploring the four SDUD elements of poverty and examining how public spaces alleviate poverty-induced feelings. Vision 2030 revolves around SDUD elements, social housing, and public spaces. Urban design policies can alleviate poverty in development projects for the poor. Integrating urban design policies into Vision 2030 makes city dwellers in developing countries feel less inferior.

Developing a guiding framework based on sustainable development to alleviate poverty, hunger and disease

“…For example, we can identify characteristics of urban poverty by measuring the density and organic textures of buildings, street systems, arrangements and open spaces. Additionally, the increasing availability of very high-resolution (VHR) data enables the treatment of the causes of urban poverty in informal settlements (Abusaada and Elshater, 2023; Kraff et al. , 2020).…”

“…For example, we can identify characteristics of urban poverty by measuring the density and organic textures of buildings, street systems, arrangements and open spaces. Additionally, the increasing availability of very highresolution (VHR) data enables the treatment of the causes of urban poverty in informal settlements (Abusaada and Elshater, 2023;Kraff et al, 2020). Zhang and Pryce (2020) used "decentralization of poverty" to highlight the implications of poor access to facilities and insufficient employment opportunities for low-income families.…”

“…healthy nutrition, infant and senior mortality and life expectancy) (Horney et al, 2020, Prasad et al, 2018, United Nations (UN) 2019). SD associates urban poverty with social indicators including social exclusion (Soyinka and Siu, 2018;Wang et al, 2020;Abusaada and Elshater, 2023), unemployment (Vandecasteele and Fasang, 2020), food availability (Biermann et al, 2021) and food insecurity (Riley, 2020). Hence, many theorists link poverty and well-being to food security and use it to measure a city's success (Madhavan et al, 2021;Riley, 2020).…”

Revisiting Urban Street Planning and Design Factors to Promote Walking as a Physical Activity for Middle-Class Individuals with Metabolic Syndrome in Cairo, Egypt

“…The second approach is ethnographic fieldwork using an episodic narrative-based storytelling technique [71][72][73]. This technique attempted to explore a socio-economic analysis and a storytelling technique based on episodic narration to examine the experiences of middle-class individuals with MetS with walking as a physical activity.…”

Promoting urban corridors in Saudi city center to enhance walkability feature using multi-criteria decision analysis methods.

“…Walkability in cities is usually affected by many factors such as Accessibility to essential services [18,30], the variety of land uses [28,31,32], residential density [33], Connectivity of the street network [19,20], Pedestrian-friendly Street design [17,23,32,34], safety from traffic and crime [35,19].…”