The concept of coordinating, greening, and beautifying cities is no longer limited to just adding a few cosmetic touches that increase the city's visual value. The city's and streets' beautification goes beyond the concept of planting trees, public lighting, cleaning, and maintenance.
The concept of coordinating, greening, and beautifying cities is no longer limited to just adding a few cosmetic touches that increase the city's visual value. The city's and streets' beautification goes beyond the concept of planting trees, public lighting, cleaning, and maintenance.
Also, the holistic aesthetic character reflected in the design of streets, squares, the coordination of locations, facades, building colors, and their relationship with residents’ lives and visitors and their activities becomes a necessity in urban planning.
Modern cities have seen a trend in changing the concept of landscaping and urban beautification in the last decade, particularly with the emergence of conceptions of sustainability and green cities.
The old concept of cities coordination was based on using trees and plants to add aesthetic landmarks to the contemporary city.
The development and beautification of cities aim to improve the appearance of squares and main streets, considering the aesthetics of memorials, light poles, benches, directional signs, and billboards, which are allowed within the framework of visual appearance. In addition, to improve some buildings, considering the architectural and artistic merits.
The coordination changes in the past decade show the truly aesthetic dimension of towns, which improves the quality of urban life.
These dimensions make up the city and encourage living, housing, working, manufacturing, creativity, and innovation. Cities have transformed from mere landscaping to vibrant green spaces that help different sectors of the urban community communicate and interact.
Town's streets, shaded with trees and decorated with flowers, became arteries for pedestrian traffic and small restaurants that provide community members the opportunity to enjoy their city. It became the arena for displaying the arts and creations of sculptors and plastic artists. Even water elements, especially fountains and lakes, are no longer aesthetic static water elements but the interaction of community members, especially children, who interact and play around the town's fountains and water bodies.
These Water Show are compatible with musical or light shows and create a character that attracts residents and tourists, such as Dubai, which has established a very distinctive fountain around the Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower in the world.
The other side of the landscape process, known as Hard Landscape, has seen many changes in its methods and goals. All elements in the streets, spaces, and squares of the town have transformed into values that play an essential role in shaping the final life aesthetic of the city. Direct and indirect light poles, colored, were installed in the streets of the towns to give an aesthetic and defining character to the town spirit in the afternoon and at night.
It varied fixed benches designs to encourage communication, gathering, and use of the town streets and open spaces. Town signs maps became widespread, as were the coordination of floors and traffic lanes and the use of materials with different textures and color values.
Art has become very important to beautify towns and increase aesthetic awareness for residents. So, the idea of public art spread, especially in large-scale sculptural works that blend with urban spaces overlapping, such as trees, lighting, seating, and color combinations.
It is fundamental to point out that the town beautification becomes a collective responsibility of the residents, who belong to their city and are proud of it. Town beautification in a holistic concept must be a national obligation and project of all stakeholders from executives, ministries, experts, and academics to develop a vision and plan to develop the aesthetic character of cities, streets, and squares.
I remember a scientific research trip to Belgium. I am visited three cities, Brussels, Leuven, and Antwerp, where I gave lectures at universities and meetings with researchers in postgraduate programs. The most important value in all three cities is its intimate friendship with people. All streets, squares, and areas devolved for a beautiful spatial experience for men, women, children, seniors, and special needs.
As I wandered the streets, I found a book titled Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns. Most important questions I have asked myself: What factors make some streets beautiful, big, and popular with residents and visitors? Why do we attract, love, and remember some streets, but not feel the same about others? Do these streets make the whole city better, more beautiful?
The world is now turning to art and applying human-friendly street design, with firmly believing that beautiful streets are the most important secret for designing and planning beautiful cities.
This global trend heavily dominates urbanization, architecture planning, and conferences to create roads for people, not for cars, and the importance of treating the road as an artery for human life, rather than just being a transport hub that celebrates and glorifies cars. It’s not just about the existence of a bike path or pedestrian lane, but it's a more comprehensive look at the road and how motivating and activating the community.