Interesting in environment and addressing damages resulted from environmental deterioration is no longer a luxury, but it become a fact and essential challenge in making the future of humanity and local, regional and international development.
Interesting in environment and addressing damages resulted from environmental deterioration is no longer a luxury, but it become a fact and essential challenge in making the future of humanity and local, regional and international development. At the contemporary moment, cities has become the home of about half of the world population. United Nation organization expects further accelerated urbanization in the coming decades. City, as a social context, is a human institution that must be organized and managed to achieve social harmony and life conditions harmony for its residents. Due to the importance of urban life, the interest in urban issues has nationally, regionally and internationally increased. Judgments are vary on the problem of different cities and creating of national and international laws to make life in cities more comfortable and link it sustainable development.
Arab cities have ignored the environmental and human dimension in their urban plans for a long time and rushed into a developmental race dropping standards related to the fact that city is the domain for a safe, productive and enjoyable life that allows the contiguousness and absorption of multiple and diverse sectors of human society, such as children adults, women and people with special needs. Within the framework of the concepts of modernization, Arab cities adopted the car as an advanced method of transportation within cities. However, the car brought with it many negative effects on urban life, and became a source of many environmental and social problems, as well as aesthetic, including threatening and ending the patterns of traditional street life, isolating individuals and dismantling the social fabric of human groups, in addition to the weakness and even diminished role of public space, especially parks, squares and yards
The required transformation is the orientation towards the humanization of cities, which is an integrated development and planning process aims to make cities more suitable for humans, in which they feel that they live in a friendly city to them, to which they belong, a city that take care of them, motivates them and make them enjoy the various stages of their life and makes them reassured about themselves, their families, their neighbors and all their partners in a city that they love and it loves them.
We call for a new development concept for the Arab city, which is the concept of the living, active and human city. This lively city is a city that embraces axes of movement for pedestrians and cyclists in its streets and neighborhoods. It is a city filled with beautifully designed, well maintained active parks, public spaces. It is a city friendly to children, women, elders and people with special needs. This human city gives the first voice in deciding its destiny and making future decisions for its residents and the local community.
The humanization of cities begins with the rules and regulations after studying the current situation and involving city residents in making their cities. Participatory design is one of the successful methods of planning and redeveloping neighborhoods and it is still completely missing from us. Who knows the needs of the metropolis more than its inhabitants?
The thesis also calls for a comprehensive strategy to activate a vital initiative to transform Arab city centers into car-free contexts that prioritize pedestrians, cyclists, and an integrated, interconnected public transport network. The positives of this approach, especially in terms of improving the environment, living and quality of life, achieving sustainable development and developing cities that take into account the environmental and human dimensions in their organization, moving axes, spaces, functional and aesthetic organization.
Hence the importance of the plan’s role in reformulating the city to accommodate a distinguished environmental performance that avoids any contributions to environmental deterioration and limits harmful emissions and thus reduces the risk of global warms. The plan is also required to direct the lifestyle in the contemporary city towards moving by foot or by public transportation, and to reduce the use of the car, which experiences have proven to be one of the most harmful to the environment. These efforts are the inevitable approach that must be adopted to transform our Arab cities into human-friendly cities.