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This study is deemed an urgent appeal to the decision makers against the inattentive practices (of automobilism, privatization and profiteering) that took place on the waterfront over the past two decades. Such urban policies had aroused several aesthetical, functional, and environmental concerns that left the shoreline in an unequivocal jeopardy.
Nowadays, instead of being the epitome of Alexandrian delights, the waterfront is on the verge of losing the quintessence of its public realm; hence the critique of the present-day fiasco is to prompt a paradigm shift in community placemaking and to stress the importance of adopting the core principles of environmental urban design for a better democratic and sustainable waterfront.
Retrieve The Waterfront Alexandria
Strategies & Guidelines Framework Towards a Democratic Corniche
Discipline
URBAN PLANNING
Year
2014
Workplace
Politecnico di Milano
Typology
Master's Thesis
Location
Alexandria, Egypt
Scope of Work
M.Sc. Thesis in Strategic Urban Planning
In his book The Sustainable City of the Mediterranean, Giovanni Spalla demonstrates that “The liquid city is not only a port area, but an accumulation of productive, relational, cultural, leisure and housing functions. It’s not enclosed and protected area, but an osmotic interface and a permeable perimeter, sometimes rigid, but as much often spongy.”
Such a rationale was systematically disregarded when an ambitious project for a new waterfront had been launched in 1998: An initiative that remained nonchalant about finding any effective solutions or comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of the waterfont; instead, it would merely widen the asphalted footprint of the Corniche road.
01. Historical Overview
The inexperience of such thoughtless interventions resulted in a series of failures that led to a dysfunctional, unpleasant and nonresilient waterfront. Under these circumstances, the research is committed to tackle a wide range of various topics, such as Urban Identity, Physical & Visual accessibility to Public Realm, Social Inclusion & Well-being, Quality of Open Space, Pedestrianism, Spatial Continuum, Integrity of Urban Infrastructure, Mobility, Traffic Congestion, Coastal Resilience, Shoreline Protection and Marine Conservation.
The multitudinous array of the presented challenges will guide the research to devise an analytical interdisciplinary framework that embodies composite studies and several representation techniques in order to cope with the compelling conditions at their interscalar typologies and dynamics as follows:
02. Research & Analysis
2.1. Perceptual Analysis
This study looks forward to visually reconstruct the mental image and the cityscape that was intentionally overshadowed by the new road. Its main purpose is to evoke particular ethos of the former waterfront from a perceptual point of view.
- Tracing of Historical Cartography:
This cartographical survey would include maps dating back to the 15th century and all the way to today’s satellite imagery. The review of historical maps was an inevitable passage to understand the natural setting of the coastline and the morphological urban growth of the city’s metropolitan area.
- Reconstruction of Urban Panorama:
The most critical junctures of transformation were evidenced by a collection of urban photography for the seasides' precedent settings. Collated into a timeline preview, the photos are assorted, closely fitted, and finally referenced to their pertinent location on the map. The genuine composition of such a photographic abacus has rendered an overall chronoception of the urban spectacle and a thorough reminiscence of the patterns of activities and the iconic structures that once stood on the waterfront.
- sonic Map:
socio-spatial analysis / collective memory
2.2. Functional Analysis
The drive to analyze mobility is not a target in its own, but rather a tool to assess the operational capacity of the Corniche road within the entire street network. Therefore, the main theme will focus on the overall performance of the Corniche road, by means of which the conclusive reformation strategies for the waterfront are straightforwardly influenced.
- Street Network Analysis:
It features the conventional analysis through which the integrity of the infrastructural network is evaluated according to the configuration and the physical conditions of its major streets. To simplify the general hierarchical system of criss-crossing edges and nodes, the analysis was carried out not only longitudinally through the Corniche and other arterial roads but also transversally across collector roads and bigger clusters of urban interconnections.
- Multiple Centrality Assessment:
City Engine is an automated tool that utilizes Space Syntax Methodology to compute global integration, local integration and in-between centrality for each street. It generates a model that is graphically visualized in a range of colors representing the level of centrality for each street. Such a powerful simulation tool has made a notable contribution to the study, through rating the computational values of centrality for the Corniche road within the intricacy of the city’s urban fabric.
- Mobility and Transportation:
“Widening roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity”, says The Orlando Traffic Engineer Walter Kulash. That is to say, the new road seems to have acquired greater capacity in accommodating bigger traffic volumes rather than its actual efficacy in transporting passengers.
This would trigger a domino effect that is exacerbated by the lack of mobility planning; the deterioration of public transportation has ipso facto given rise to the private car ownership and induced the emergence of informal transport services (like: Minibuses & Auto rickshaws); the uncontrollable patterns of mobility resulted in traffic congestions, bottlenecks and gridlocks in most of the city’s vital roads; the extensive asphalting work
didn’t particularize any clear profile of urban living street, instead, it generated a fast moving motorway where accidents had become an ordinary routine. In fact, according to WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety of 2012, Egypt is ranked as a country with one of the highest rates of mortality due to road traffic crashes. 39.5% of drivers violate the speed limit on the Alexandrian Corniche Road in which the top violators are Buses, followed respectively by Private Vehicles, Taxis, Microbuses and Trucks.
The research resorts to a study of traffic engineering that was conducted in 2009 using a VISUM Transport Model, in which the traffic conditions are attributed as a function of (Volume:Capacity) and the outcomes are graphically visualized in a range of colors representing the level of congestion of every street.
2.3. Environmental Analysis
The city’s low elevation above sea level makes it highly vulnerable to rising sea levels. In addition, the consecutive transformations on its littoral grounds has altered the seabed causing geohazards such as coastal erosions, landslides, debris flows and flooding; therefore, the interpolation of this analysis is to guide the research through finding a new setting for environmental resilience, specially on the east side of the city.
- Dredging & Land reclamation:
On the one hand, a backshore reduction was carried out to broaden the road at the expense of significant coastal structures (where the deliberate demolition of the beach cabins has obliterated the characteristic features of the waterfront). On the other hand, foreshore reduction was intended to broaden the road at the expense of the beach itself (where a considerable portion of land was exclusively dedicated to the newly privatized waterfront). Therefore, a selection of historical satellite imagery was traced and subsequently incorporated with the above-mentioned perceptual analysis "Reconstruction of Urban Panorama" to map the evolution of the waterfront and fully grasp the impact of the extension project.
- Environmental Reports:
The graphical representation of environmental studies, reports, surveys and specialists’ statements was to identify the most critical spots on the waterfront, highlight the reasons behind their failure, and eventually outline the general topography and alongshore-altitude of the Corniche road.
Due to the heterogeneity of both the collected data and the varied urban patterns along such a lengthy coastline, the study area was unevenly segmented not only to guarantee the homogeneity of each pattern but also to constitute the hierarchies of the research outputs. The initial interest was to derive an appellation as well as a graphical motif for each pattern. This was to establish a milieu for visual communication and to simulate comparative scenarios of today vs. tomorrow. These diagrams exemplify the project's tokens which inspired the endeavour to schematize the adopted policies map, elucidate the proposed guidelines and eventually develop a strategic master plan.
03. Conclusive Diagrams
Most of the recent municipal plans were either automobile-oriented (as the predominance of the Corniche road allowed motorists to prevail over pedestrians), Elitism-oriented (as the development of the gated waterfront for private clubs & hotels), or Tourism-oriented (as the visionary plan for the Eastern Harbor mostly proposing new touristic attractions). Apparently the city was never provided any strategic plan or comprehensive vision that guides the future development of its waterfront; on the contrary this framework is vowed to embrace an antithesis that abides by the emphasis on the waterfront and the importance of its public identity in the Alexandrian vernacular.
