Sustainable Neighborhood Assessment: Evaluating Residential Sustainability in Sharjah City's Old Neighborhoods Using the UN-Habitat's Sustainable Neighborhood Principles

Abstract

Neighborhood sustainability plays a fundamental role in preserving the city for population growth and future expansion. It also plays a significant role in reducing urban sprawl, one of the main issues facing rapidly growing cities. Ideal sustainable neighborhood planning should address the three sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic, and social sustainability. This paper aims to assess the urban sustainability of the Al Nasseriya neighborhood in Sharjah City according to the UN-Habitat's five principles of sustainable neighborhoods. The strategy depends on investigative procedures utilizing information examination, site visits, and data analysis. Conventionally, the study is based on the UN-Habitat's guidelines on practical neighborhoods that state that neighborhoods should be minimal, coordinated, and associated. They suggest a quantitative analysis scope as a maintainability investigation of neighborhoods using five primary administrators: an effective road network, high-density population, mixed land uses, social blending, and limited land-use specializations. The assessment shows that Sharjah's physical urban context has several shortcomings related to the UN-Habitat's criteria that should be addressed. The results of the study demonstrate the critical issues affecting urban sustainability practice in the study area. Finally, urban improvement guidelines are recommended to advance development and amplify proficiency.

Multiple-Criteria Methods for Assessing Social Sustainability in the Built Environment: A Systematic Review

“…Studies that have examined specific cases concerning their social sustainability have used a range of methods, including SAW [7,18], AHP [64,66,[71][72][73][74], the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) [10], descriptive analysis [59,75,76], social network analysis (SNA) [46,77], the analytic network process (ANP) [50], factor analysis [51,58], and machine-learning techniques [78]. In some other cases, the selected studies have avoided formal methods altogether, opting instead to evaluate the case according to selected criteria [45,61].…”

“…Post-construction, social sustainability involves monitoring and evaluating the social performance of the built environment, by ensuring that it continues to meet the community's [52,58,75] and final user's [15,51,58,67,68,71,72,75,76] needs. This may include assessing the provision of social infrastructure, such as affordable housing, schools, and healthcare facilities [15,71,76], as well as evaluating the project's long-term impact on local economies, cultural heritage, and social cohesion [15,51]. The aim is to foster a built environment that enhances social well-being, promotes social inclusion, and contributes to present and future generations' overall quality of life [15,75].…”

Evaluating Environmental Sustainability of Egyptian New Urban Communities Based on UN Neighborhood Planning Principles

“…Of course, these principles can be used for assessing any Egyptian urban area and determining its compatibility with these principles. These principles can be dustingushed as follows [14][15][16]; 1. The indicator of the first principle can be computed by dividing the street area over the total floor area.…”

“…This neighborhood can be planned to be compact, integrated and connected neighborhood in addition to affording the chance to the developing the relationship between urban spaces and dwellers [15]. For achieving this planning task, it must be combine the qualitative and quantitative methods to be implemented on the selected area for giving the quick intuitive decision about its rate of sustainability in addition to achieve wide-ranging planning for sustainable neighborhood development [16]. The equations of the UN-Habitat methodology are mentioned and discussed in [14,16].…”

“…For achieving this planning task, it must be combine the qualitative and quantitative methods to be implemented on the selected area for giving the quick intuitive decision about its rate of sustainability in addition to achieve wide-ranging planning for sustainable neighborhood development [16]. The equations of the UN-Habitat methodology are mentioned and discussed in [14,16]. The five principles situation are interconnected and support each other and provide quantitative measurements that could be used to assess the neighborhood.…”