Participatory Landscape: Better Scenario for Poor Egyptian Urban Settings in Existing and New City Districts—Case of Monshaet Nasser and 6th October City

Abstract

Participatory landscape approaches are currently being positioned as the essential basis for sustainable landscape development. However, with the current democratic transform and the consequent decentralization of the spatial planning policy in Egypt, no practices have been conducted in this field. Accordingly, there is a vital need for coherent and integrated approaches for the practical application of participatory landscape. This paper represents one of a series of research papers targeting this aim. It focuses on poor urban settings in existing informal areas and in new cities’ districts, represented by the case studies of Monashaet Nasser and the sixth district in the 6th of October city, respectively, which are used to carry out the questionnaires, followed by a statistical analysis and illustrative causal loop diagrams. The questionnaire integrates measuring local residents’ willingness and participation methods together with the practitioners’ recommendations for their degree of involvement as compared with the other stakeholders, with the functional, environmental, aesthetical, economic, maintainability, and sociability quality aspects of the landscape that would be achieved. The tests undertaken in this research were carried out through a statistical analysis using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) program, followed by an illustrative analysis for the results represented by the causal loop diagrams, which show a clear representation for the roles of each of the residents and stakeholders in the process. The results illustrate the fact that although the two case studies were from the same economic level, there were variations among most of the findings concerning the local residents’ participation method. They indicated that the local residents in existing poor urban settings prefer to participate with their effort only, whereas those living in the poor new cities’ districts are willing to participate with their money, time, and effort. Moreover, it was found that the landscape aspects that would be positively affected are the maintainability aspects for the existing area and the sociability aspects for the relatively new district, with traces of negative effects on the functional and aesthetical landscape qualities. This highlights the challenges for the decision makers when constructing their implementation plans, to achieve the balance among all roles of stakeholders to avoid any negative effects and overcome the distrust landscape problems that have been compositely formed upon past participatory experiences, especially in existing poor settings.