- Reconsidering Town and Town-Making Principles: A Study Pertaining to New Cairo City Center    44 kb by    Zakaria El Adli, Khalid | eladli@gega.net    Short Outline Designed to deepen the knowledge of perceptual performance of urban space and stimulate creative thinking for the city of the future, this article attempts to identify those intrinsic and inherent qualities of space that enliven the cityscape and contribute to its character and identity. A discussion pertaining to methods of improving perceptual performance of urban environments is followed by an in-depth investtigation of the master planning of the city center of New Cairo (a new satellite town process), as implemented by the author. The article examines the sensual aspects of urban form and concludes with definite criteria for improving perceptual performance of Urban Centers while promoting explicit character. Abstract RECONSIDERING TOWN AND TOWN - MAKING PRINCIPLES: A STUDY PERTAINING TO IMPROVING PERCEPTUAL PERFORMANCE OF URBAN SPACE - NEW CAIRO CITY AS AN EXEMPLAR By Khalid Zakaria El Adli Imam, Ph.D., Assoc. AIA, F. Assoc. ASLA Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Urban Design, Faculty of Urban & Regional Planning, Cairo University ABSTRACT: Cities link us both to our collective past and to our shared future. They record our history, and communicate meaning about societal and cultural values. The layout of cities reflect the societies that created them. Cities continue to express societies long after members of the social group are gone. For example, Florence is famous as the birthplace of Renaissance. As an urban landscape, it expresses this well, as Renaissance facades emerge from a medieval urban mass and street pattern. The dynamic interplay of Renaissance order and medieval spontaneity is in no small part responsible for the mortality and image of Florence as the birthplace of the Renaissance. Rome, on the other hand, flourishes today as a center of history. In the city center and at every corner, there is a column, a wall, and a stretch of paving dating from the city's past. History is so close at hand that it no longer seems remote. Yet, among these magnificent remains are a fine Renaissance city and a bustling modern one. But, a person's strong emotional attachment to a particular location is ascribed to a positive satisfactory experience. Many people today find pleasure in ancient and traditional cities. By virtue of their evolution these cities offer urban spaces and streets of exquisite qualities, which rarely are present in many contemporary cities. This is particularly due to the grandeur scale of development in many contemporary cities, the absence of symbolic sygnificance and historical association, the state of society, and the gap between the users and the planners. All these ills and others have combined to negatively influence people's physical and psychological health. As a result large planned settlements of distinguished form are quite rare in modern cities. It is for this reason that in the early 1960's urban advocates such as Lewis Mumford, Bernard Rudofsky, Jane Jacobs, and William White began emphasizing the importance of establishing quality street life offering an appropriateness of sensual information and leading to a positive satisfactory experience. Designed to deepen the knowledge of cities of the past and stimulate creative thinking for the city of the future, this article thus attempts to identify those intrinsic and inherent qualities of space that enliven the cityscape and contribute to its character and identity. A discussion pertaining to methods of improving perceptual performance of urban environments is followed by an in-depth investigation of the process as implemented by the author in the master planning of the city center of New Cairo (a new satellite town). The article examines the sensual aspects of urban form and concludes with definite criteria for improving perceptual performance of cities while promoting and explicit character. Keywords Towns, Perceptual Performance, City Center Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2002: The Pulsar Effect   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper