2016 Volume 3 Pages 187-202
One of the most traditional and growing major cities in Saudi Arabia, Jeddah City established building design standards for villas and apartments in 1960. These design standards have changed several times in response to population increases. However, these standards have had adverse effects on streets: 1) motorization has created pressure on planned neighborhood streets, which resulted in an unsafe environment for pedestrians who must share the road with vehicles. 2) Because of the lack of availability apartments in mixed land-use neighborhoods, the municipality has allowed apartments to be built in desirable villa neighborhoods. Apartment and villa neighborhoods had been separated until 2007 because of privacy concerns. The new combination of buildings has resulted in a loss of privacy in villas overlooked by apartment buildings. Apartment residents are also parking their cars in villas’ front yards because of a parking shortage. This study aims to 1) make spatial configuration arrangements of design standards, 2) define the spatial configuration combinations of streets and residential buildings by analyses of the expanding urbanization process, and 3) identify the issues with streets and determine a method to avoid such issues in future neighborhood planning. This study found: 1) a reality gap in design standards, such as the setback line and its relation to parking spaces, 2) unsuitable assumptions regarding car ownership per household, which resulted in a parking shortage, and 3) that resident use of sidewalk spaces as a semiprivate space negatively impacts the pedestrian environment.
