Spatial enclosure assessment toward more livable urban communities in Aswan city

Abstract

Livability is one of the primary guiding principles for policy-making and urbanists, of which the evaluation and definition have become the crucial research topic of countering. The micro-scale living conditions necessitate more urgent attention as the progress in socio-economic development accelerates. However, few researchers have addressed the evaluation criteria of urban livability at spatial enclosure scales as community scale. Therefore, this paper aims to create an urban communitylevel balanced weight evaluation statistical system, as residential communities are one of the basic units of urban living places. Twenty-nine objective indicators are selected to establish the indicator system. Considering different age groups, a comprehensive evaluation framework for communities' livability combines objective indicators and subjective perceptions. Accordingly, this study is applied to assess the urban microscale livability of residential communities in Aswan City. There are significant results from the study. Different age groups have distinct demands for an urban community's livability. They have valued some indicators and concentrated on the following two dimensions: pedestrians' rights and convenience of transportation. Finally, the communities' livability shows a decreasing spatial pattern from the city center to the surroundings. These empirical findings may be helpful to urbanists and other parties as stakeholders for future development.