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VIRTUAL Barcelona Livable Cities

The Urban Experience: From Social Policy to Design
Restorative Urban Environments: Commercial Streets Restorative Expectations in Jeddah City.
A. Houldar

Abstract

The rising trend in the global growth of cities, particularly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has come with increased congestion, traffic, and noise, all of which could be linked to the upsurge in mental health issues reported in urban centers. Precedent studies have focused on how urban green parks can enhance restoration among city dwellers. The current study takes a different perspective by exploring how commercial streets can serve to restore the depleted psychological and social well-being in urban centers. Stress reduction is maximized when individuals have a visual perception of green spaces. The Attention Restoration Theory (ART) and psycho-evolutionary theories point out the need to reduce rising stress levels in urban areas. The theorists explain that when people spend time observing natural scenes, nature provides a sense of being away from daily directed attention, fascination, extent, and compatibility. This study adopted a literature review and case study approach. Three case commercial streets (Tahliah Street, Palestine Street, and Ahmed Al Attas Street) were chosen for the study. Both online surveys and scenarios were used to investigate how users rate the current restorativeness of the three selected case study streets and how users rate the expected restorativeness for the same three streets. Using SPSS V 26.0, the gathered data were analyzed. Cronbach’s alpha was determined prior to analysis. The results show that developing commercial streets that meet the desired restorative experience remains challenging. Further, there is a disconnect between the design and realization of restorative streets in Jeddah city. Notably, there is a disconnect between urban, landscape, and architecture design and the restorative role of commercial streets in restoring mental health among Jeddah city dwellers.

Biography

Ahmed Houldar is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, specializing in Quality of Life in Urban Environments. His research focuses on enhancing restorative urban spaces, with a primary case study in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Ahmed holds a Bachelor’s degree from King Abdulaziz University, where he earned first place in the Innovation Award for his sustainability project on informal neighborhoods. He also holds a Master’s degree with honors from the University of Sheffield, where he conducted pioneering work on “Restorative Urban Environments.” Currently, he continues to expand on this topic