The Future of Suburbia: Tracing Old Landscapes in New Developments. Do Compact Design Ideals Make Suburbs More Sustainable? (The Case of Dubai Neighbourhoods)

Abstract

The ongoing pandemic has devastated many aspects of human life, and its aftermath has impacted many fields, including urban planning and design. Pandemic control measures in cities must accommodate people’s need for access to outdoor areas for physical, social, and emotional welfare. These post-pandemic city requirements positioned suburbia as a more appealing and viable alternative to cramped urban centers. Suburbs are known for being automobile-dependent, low-density developments with fragmented looping streets that result in low levels of accessibility within neighborhoods. Nevertheless, these shortcomings of suburbs make it challenging to achieve high accessibility levels. Through quantitative morphological analysis, Urban Network Analysis (UNA), and design iteration proposals for case studies from Dubai have revealed a substitute suburban design model for a post-pandemic suburb. The Gravity metric was used to calculate 400- and 800-meter walking radii and design principles from good-performing samples were used to redesign low-performing ones. The results show that integrating morphological attributes such as plot density above the suburban average, interconnected street typologies, and strategic alley placement indicate enhanced accessibility in the suburbs.

Date of Award	Dec 2022
Original language	American English
Supervisor	KHALED ALAWADI (Supervisor)