Architecture Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Reviving The Neglected Urban Spaces Using Recreational Facilities, Malek Demashkieh

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Neglection is the act of failing to care about something, it is the act of carelessness and forgetting. Adding to that in the same context, neglected urban spaces are barren lands that have been forgotten by the government making these lands gaps scattered in the city like rivers that are natural freshwater streams that flow into a canal that leads to the sea, a lake, or another river. Harmonizing these areas into the society will offer opportunities for these spaces to become a liveable, social, urban public spaces. Unfortunately, forgotten, and neglected riverfronts areas are found in the cities, thus …

Role Of Public Spaces In Re-Activating The Cultural Identity, Reem Al-Zein

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Culture plays an important role in defining a society's values and identity. Craftsmanship has remained an important aspect of Lebanese cultural identity and history, contributing to the shaping of many public and private spaces as well as supporting families and people's livelihoods. Unfortunately, considering the significance of craftsmen cultural production in the country's social and economic development, it is still a lost field nowadays. Therefore, as result, this tradition is diminishing, threatening Lebanon's intangible cultural heritage. Therefore, this paper aims to develop convenient solutions to regenerate and to preserve the city's social, historical, and cultural image and identity through creating …

Proposing Guidelines To Upgrade The Open Public Spaces In The Informal Settlements, Lena Hosni, Ayman Afify, Hiba Mohsen, Maged Youssef

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Informal Settlements have expanded rapidly in the last fifty years and have kept rising. With rapid population expansion has come an increase in haphazard urbanisation and informal settlements, frequently referred as slums. Defined as a settlement that was formed in an unplanned and uncontrolled way, which means they are mostly unrecognized. Unfortunately, focusing on the problem of current challenges in informal settlements, on the socio-cultural and environmental levels, which are facing a massive shift in the quality of life in these sites, this is reflected in urban fragmentations, social and infrastructures are lacking, service systems that have become progressively inefficient …

A Playworker’S Musings On The Perceptions And Importance Of ’Mess’ In A Play Space., Angus Ian Gorrie

International Journal of Playwork Practice

The aesthetics of any given play environment is often subject to immense scrutiny, often at the behest of adult agendas. This paper will, from a playwork practitioner’s perspective, discuss how aspects of perceptive mess in a play space positively affect play, the physical opportunities for children, their wellbeing, sense of belonging and their ability to create a sense of order as they see it. This will be juxtaposed against the situations in which children find themselves, by adult design, that paradoxically have the opposite effect. The author has drawn heavily from aspects of playwork theory and practice in the development …

Exploring The Qualities Of Child-Friendly Outdoor Spaces: A Field Study In Low Income Neighbourhoods - Case Study: Sabra, Beirut, Lebanon, Farah Ahmad Mefleh, Hiba Mohsen, Baher Farahat

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Children’s play areas are from the past an indispensable right for children, in which it allows children to build their physical environment and assess it cognitive thinking. But today, the city, especially in low-income population suffers from a clear shortage of open spaces, where the leftover spaces are left empty used for garbage, old tanks car parts, and many other bad issues. This has negatively affected society, mainly children, where they become vulnerable to many social ills and problems that threaten their lives and behaviour. This paper tries to ameliorate and presents adequate children’s play areas, for the low-income population, …