Strategies for Urban Residual Areas as a Planning Tool: Towards Achieving Sustainable Built Environment by Connecting Neighbourhoods

In large parts of the Gulf countries, neighbourhoods' mono-functional structures with their low density and their lack of social functions, lively public spaces, public transportation and climate responsive design features have catered for an environmentally unfriendly development pattern. Borders between neighbourhoods are mostly socially repulsive as they usually host large residual and underutilized spaces such as oversized main roads and other infrastructure elements. Consequently, these residual areas constitute large breaks in the neighbourhoods' building pattern and physical barriers for the inhabitants. Since we see a great potential in these residual areas, we have elaborated a planning tool which is generally applicable for sustainable development of transitional spaces between neighbourhoods. This study demonstrates different strategies on how these urban thresholds between neighbourhoods can be transformed into central active mixed-use public spaces that will be reachable for all residents by walking. Accordingly, they can promote for social interaction between different neighbourhoods and thus social sustainability. Within this paper, at first, the thresholds between different residential neighbourhoods' structures are examined to better understand their qualities and deficits. Secondly, various sustainable development options for the threshold areas are demonstrated. An exemplary site in the Capital Area of Muscat, Oman serves as a case study. The third part consists of an evaluation of the elaborated proposals according to their ecological, social and economical efficiency in order to create adequate implementation strategies. Finally, we propose that the ecological solutions for residual areas as developed in this paper for the GCC region can be expanded to other hot-climate countries as a planning tool to achieve sustainable built environments by connecting different neighbourhoods.