Space syntax as a tool to enhance the performance of El-Tahrir complex plaza

Abstract EN

Urban public spaces, including downtown plazas, are important for communities, as places to practice different activities that help meet users' functional, psychological and social needs.

El-Tahrir Complex Plaza is one of the most important downtown plazas in Cairo, due to its strategic location.

However, few people use the plaza for activities except as a transitional space for people crossing it on their way from a place to another, and does not seem to play any roles beyond that.

Therefore, the study aims to investigate the interrelationship between spatial configurations of El-Tahrir Complex Plaza and users' behavior.

In other words, this study investigates the impact of plazas' spatial configuration on user's activities within the plaza, aiming to identify physical and syntactical aspects that affect users' behavior, and led to space underutilization, and dispersal of users within the plazas.

Space Syntax techniques were used along with various observational methods, including gate counts, and movement traces to identify the spatial and social properties of the plaza by measuring the accessibility and visibility values.

By superimposing observation maps onto syntactical maps, the results showed that integration correlates strongly with pedestrian movement, and that visual integration correlates moderately with static activities, indicating that syntactic measures are a good predictor of human behavior.

Thus, Space Syntax can become a vital tool for urban designers aiming to enhance utilization of urban plazas.

Accordingly, a number of design alternatives were tested and compared and an alternative was chosen for its likeliness of improving space utilization.