Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture Department, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt
2
Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture Department, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt.
3
Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture Department, British University, Cairo, Egypt.
Abstract
During the last decades, public spaces gained much attention from experts and
researchers who sought to study factors affecting the quality of such spaces, and
evaluate the extent of user satisfaction inside these spaces. Many assessment indexes
and toolkits were developed to evaluate the quality of public space and specify the
weak points that need development. This study aims to clarify similarities and
differences between these tools and to highlight different methodologies of
assessments, and presents the extent to which these tools meet human needs by
comparing between seven of assessment tools; The project of public space (PPS),
Gehl Assessment toolkit, CABE Space shaper, UN-Habitat Public space site-specific
assessment, Place Standard Tool, The Good Public Space (GPSI) index, and Great
Public Space toolkit, in terms of the assessment tool’s aim, structure, methodology,
scoring system, and by discussing strength and weakness of each tool, to define the
most comprehensive index from human needs point of view. The comparison showed
differences between the assessment tools in assessing methods and in their
assessment criteria according to the theory or principles that they follow. The study
deduced a set of common criteria categorized according to human needs, and noticed
a wide range of coverage of social and aesthetic aspects more than the other aspects,
the study found that UN-Habitat, GPSI are the assessment tools that covers most
aspects of human needs and are thus considered to be the most comprehensive.
Keywords