Open spaces: spatial configuration, visibility analysis and use

Case study of mass housing in Biskra, Algeria

Abstract

Open spaces provided in mass housing schemes is considered as one of largest issues in public mass housing, and their use by the inhabitants has been a concern and a topic of interest of many fields, where the focus is on inhabitant behavior in space according to either inhabitant/inhabitant or inhabitant/space relation. This open space constitutes a structuring space for the large housing estates, by the ties that connect between the buildings that compose it and the inhabitants who use it. Amongst the various deficiencies that mass housing schemes particular present today is the inability of promoting successful open spaces, which is mainly reflected by patterns of their use, therefore produce an abandoned, deserted, and degraded spaces, this is generally an indication that something is wrong with their layout design, in this regard, this paper revolves around the use of open public space in the 1000 collective housing units in the city of Biskra (Algeria), which provides a variety of open spaces forms, hence; to know how the spatial configuration and the site organization affect the way spaces are used by the inhabitants, based on the hypothesis that the use of open public spaces in mass housing is intimately linked to the visual fields produced by the spatial configuration. The analysis process draws on two methods, an observation in-situ to explore why in the neighbourhood, some parts are more occupied and more preferred by people than others, using the technique of behavioural mapping, i.e. people counting and spatial use mapping, taking into consideration three age groups (children, adults, elderly), further to look for links between visibility and spatial use, a syntactic analysis is carried out to analyze visibility properties using Depthmap software. The results of this study indicate that the visual factor, the buildings arrangements, and the site organization in the mass housing substantially affect the use and the quality of their open spaces.