Abstract
Public open spaces are becoming more sought after in the present-day model of sustainable community and urban development. This study addresses the emerging concern with lack of safe and equitable public spaces in rapidly growing and over-crowded cities. It presents a brief discussion of fragmented urban settings and the disputed edges that are formulated as a result of this milieu. This notion is part of a wider placemaking approach towards co-creating nodes of public space to replace the existing socio-spatial barriers; whether they are impassable streets, barricaded squares, fenced walls, abandoned lots or unsafe parks. The study outlines a preliminary strategy model to be implemented in the city of Cairo, Egypt in areas where there is a clear social, political, economic, and/or physical demarcation, as a tool to investigate further the above premise. Through an integrated process of participatory action and spatial configuration analysis, the paper first traces and studies fragmented routes along with highlighting potential public nodes in Cairo. Second, it proposes a placemaking strategy to reclaiming citizen ownership, initiating a collective place-led development and building capacity on those poorly utilized nodes to create a cohesive network of micro public spaces. Third, it focuses on one of those nodes as a pilot project to which the edge-based placemaking framework could be experimented and applied. Finally, the conclusion drawn from developing the pilot project along with recommendations for future expansions and applications of the proposed framework are included.
