Principles of Gestalt laws and everyday urbanism

The International Journal of the

Constructed Environment

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VOLUME 5 ISSUE 3-4

ABEER ELSHATER

__________________________________________________________________________

The Principles of Gestalt Laws and Everyday

Urbanism A Visual Tactic of City Potentialities

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The Principles of Gestalt Laws and Everyday

Urbanism: A Visual Tactic of City Potentialities

Abeer Elshater, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abstract: Since the 1950s, designers of metropolitan cities have become master participants in the field of architecture.

Today, in Egyptian communities, the conditions of the built environment need to reflect a deeper understanding of the principles of urban design—the art of the city. Urban design is tangent to the new global movements toward quality of

life and significant visual qualities. This paper offers an elaborated introduction to the research justification; visual

chaos. It focuses on the trend of urban visualization appropriateness toward a good city form in the urban sprawl in Cairo, Egypt. It concentrates on the interactions between visual perception and everyday urbanism as a new approach in

developing countries. It emphasizes the interactions between geometry and meaning in the art of the city as tool to

analysis visual context in Cairo.

Keywords: Urban Design Paradigms, Gestalt School, Everyday Urbanism

Introduction: Research Justification and Seven Pivotal Questions

oday, particularly in Cairo’s built environmental conditions that resemble the most

respected, traditional, ancient, and contemporary suburban sprawl in cities, Egyptian

communities need a deeper and more enhanced understanding of design principles for the

art of the city. These principles are tangential with new global movements toward quality of life,

which are the root of character (English Partnerships 2007, 41) and are embedded in the history

of thought of the different urban design paradigms that involve various schools, movements,

approaches, theories, trends, and methods (Alexander, Ishikawa and Silverstein 1977); (Trancik

1986, 97-120); (Watson, Plattus and Shibley 2003, 3.1-3.10); (Sigley 2003, 98). The crucial

question is, “What may be expected from these paradigms’ legacies for the traditional Egyptian

city?” In Greater Cairo, 62 percent of households live in informal settlements (United Nations

Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) 2012, 55). This informality affects negatively on

the visual appearance of Cairo, the capital of Egypt (Nagati and Stryker 2013, 5). A

contemporary report mentioned that: “in order to reinvigorate the role of streets in the economic,

social and environmental functions of the city, there is a need to redesign public space to make it

more vibrant” (United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2013, 35, 36). The results

expected from these interventions are better visual quality of the city and increased social

cohesion and efficiency.

The conditions of the Egyptian constructed environment need to reflect a deeper

understanding of how to enhance the principles of Urban Design—the art of the city (Mumford

2009); (Landry 2006, 7, 8). Urban design is tangent to new global movements towards quality of

life. This article provides an elaborated introduction to the research justification. It focuses on the

trends of urban visualization appropriateness toward a good city form in the urban sprawl of a

residential community in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The article concentrates on the interactions

between visual dimensions, specifically referring to Everyday Urbanism as a new approach in

developing countries. Finally, the article emphasizes interactions between geometry, as in the

Gestalt school, and meaning in the art of the city. This study focuses on the impact of “the art of

relation” (Cullen 1971, 7-9, 58) that emerged in urban design during the 1950s by Sert (Mumford

and Sarkis 2008). This art of relationship can be viewed through Everyday Urbanism (EU) and

Gestalt Laws, the main interest being to design an approach to mix the principles of everyday

T

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENT

urbanism. The article extends to a design matrix to test the viability of the proposed method in a

case in Cairo, Egypt.

The motivation of the research justification was the chaos of visual appearance that Cairo-

the Capital of Egypt- has. This visual chaos is regarded in (Figure 1). Thus, the research presents

the hypothesis that respecting the art of relationship can be reflected directly in the responsive

users’ attitudes toward the constructed environment. For verifying the hypnosis, the researcher

follows a descriptive- analytical methodology. The research structure consists of four parts. First

is the theoretical background, focusing on the description of urban design paradigm, specifically

the perceptual/visual dimension. Second, the study reviews the Gestalt Laws and EU principles

as a tactic of arousing city potentialities. Third, the study proposes a comprehensive approach

from the viewpoint of the visual dimension. Finally, the proposed analytical approach is tested in

a neighborhood in Cairo.

Source: (United Nations Human Settlements Programme

2011, ii) Source: (United Nations Human Settlements Programme

2011, 38)

Source: (United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2011, 4)

Source: (United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2011, 129)

Source: (MR 2013) (Zaher 2014)

Figure 1: The visual chaos in Cairo

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ELSHATER: THE PRINCIPLES OF GESTALT LAWS AND EVERYDAY URBANISM

The research objective is to present a new tool regarding to the contemporary trend in urban

design paradigm to analysis the visual context in metropolitan cities in developing countries. It

extends to develop a tactic method fit the Cairen context. This tactic approach depends on the

relationships between the geometry and meaning in the art of the city. The entire paper discusses

the remarkable changes in the contemporary urban design. This study related to the other fields

of specialization, especially the gradual transformation of the urbanization concept, focusing on

EU trends. Through the current research, this new trend tries answers seven key questions. How

do experts deal with the theoretical discipline in the art of the city? What does the space mean to

people? Who does prepare the place for public life? How do people feel toward the site? When

do the users act in public life? Where do they participate in different types of activities? Why

does the designer create attractive places and spaces?

The Notion of Meanings in Urban Design: A Review on Urban Visualization

Historically, urban design has been known as the art of the city (Cullen 1971, 7-9); (Carmona

and Tiesdell 2007), but it has seriously resonated only since the mid-1960s when it was emerging

as a scientific art taught at European and American universities, for instance at Harvard, Cornell

and University of Pennsylvania. Subsequently, urban design has attained a high level of

professional practice aimed not only at reclaiming historical centers in deteriorated areas but also

at creating new development projects, particularly in built environments. Furthermore, urban

design has been linked to cities’ public realms, identifying the most significant urban design

theories. Urban design displays the thoughts of its most respected pioneers addressing the

problems of cities. Figure 2 presents some of the most respected pioneers, whose analyses,

theories, and writings influenced and laid the groundwork for EU.

Figure 2: The most popular pioneers in urban design, who discuss issues of visual dimension

Source: The author

According to Camillo Sitte (1945), the year 1898 marked the beginning of a transformation

toward focusing on the cities’ urban form (Sitte 1945). Urban Design has become known as the

art of the city, but Sert and Sigfried Giedion first introduced the term at Harvard University in the

early 1950s. It was first publicly used in 1953, in a lecture by Sert (Krieger 2009, 17) and

appeared in the curriculum of the Graduate School of Design (GSD) in 1954, in Giedion’s class

on “History of Urban Design” and another class on “Urban Design,” taught by Sert, Hideo

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Sasaki, and Jean-Paul Carlhian (Mumford and Sarkis, Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban

Design, 1953-1969 2008). The first Urban Design Conference was held at the GSD in 1956, with

determining the aim of urban design (Krieger 2009, 44). This conference also provided a

platform for launching Harvard’s “Urban Design Program” in 1959-60. The following Urban

Design Conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958; it was titled “Conference

on Urban Design Criticism” and aimed to initiate a new urban design discipline (Laurence 2006,

146); (Pavesi 2012, 3-5).

The approaches to Urbanism gradually transformed into new theoretical paradigms: New

Urbanism (1980), EU (1999), Post Urbanism (2004), and Tactical Urbanism (2011). Most

urbanization theories derive from these approaches were proposed to solve cities’ urbanization

problems and provide solutions to the many environmental problems through ground analyses.

Urban Design theories became an essential component for a thorough study concerning the future

of architecture.

In physical reality, people cannot perceive an area’s characteristics as separated elements.

They perceive sites as complete entities, interacting to create the sense of place, as identified by

Schulz, who addresses place, based on this approach, as Genius Loci (Norberg-Schulz 1980, 5).

At the end of the 19th century, Figure-Ground theory emerged in Germany and Austria, derived

from mind theory and based on psychological thought according to the Berlin school of

psychology. The term pronounced ge-shtalt, which loosely translated means configuration,

emerged as an important concept (Graham 2008, 1). Gestalt has no direct translation in English,

but refers to “the way the thing has been gestalt, i.e., ‘placed,’ or ‘put together.’” The common

translations include the words form and shape. It has also been known as “an essence or shape of

an entity’s complete form” (Krieger 2009). The theory of the Gestalt school is to use Figure-

Ground theory as a tool in urban design, not only to discover obvious meanings but also to create

new meanings (Trancik 1986, 112). This theory provided a systematic process for describing

human perception, focusing on how changes in the city’s relational components dramatically

change its meaning.

Figure 3 proposes a design process of urban design based on visualization, beginning from

the built environment as a set ending to the Gestalt rules that help the designer make sense of

place. The process focuses on four core items of urban form illustrated in (Figure 4). Figure 5

represents these six urban design dimensions. The Gestalt theory is inseparable from the

perceptual dimension, considering the visual and cognitive scopes. Four main criteria—meaning,

identity, quality, and aesthetics—are pivotal in assessing the scope by applying six principles:

sense of place, image experience, legibility, variety, uniqueness, and appropriateness (Figure 6).

The meaning of a particular place varies from one person to another, and a person’s senses

vary for different forms. For Alexander, design is “the process of inventing physical things,

which display physical order, organization, forms …” (Alexander, Ishikawa and Silverstein

1977, 1216). In the context of urban design, geometry especially causes city forms to respond to

a particular meaning (Koffka 1935, 2); (Gunay 2007, 94, 96). In light of these two statements, the

next section addresses the Gestalt school’s theory as a viable, powerful tool used in urban design.

Apparently, city designers should be interested in the Gestalt laws of perception because Figure-

Ground theory provides a systematic method of explaining human perception. The theory focuses

on any changes in the components of city relationships that dramatically change its meaning. The

theory appears as an initial attempt to answer the following questions: What are the main

differences among shape, form, and figure? How do experts create the shapes and form of the

city? How can the Gestalt rules be applied to urban design? The answers to these questions

explore the idea of the urban design that takes account of visual perception of urban form—an

approach of form and pattern of perception, which discovers patterns of spatial distribution of

meanings.

4


.Figure 3: Urban visualization in design process

Source: The author

Figure 4: The four core items; dimensions scopes, criteria, and principles

Source: The author

5


Figure 5: The six urban design dimensions

Source: The author

Figure 6: In the process of urban design visualization, there are six dimensions, four criteria, and six principles

Source: The author

If urban design is the art of the city, the elements and principles of design are its language

(Landry 2006, 228). The elements require a good design, applied in all the visual arts, from the

graphic into the spatial and, consequently, in architecture (Ignatius 2014). The principles of

design organize or control the design elements. In the literature, the design elements vary,

ranging typically from seven to ten, starting from dots (small or large) and ending with the

direction or orientation of the elements (Rombough 2013). The elements are dots, lines, shapes,

spaces, sizes, values, colors, textures, forms, and directions. Furthermore, the principles also vary

from seven to fourteen: Pattern, contrast, emphasis, balance, proportion, harmony,

rhythm/movement, dominance, composition, repetition, variation, unity, gradation, and order

may all be included.

and criteria

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In the elements of design, lines are linear marks of varying widths—vertical, straight, or

angled—ending in an organic form or a form with three dimensions. This element seems to form

a shape or an appearance with dimension. Variation in line direction defines the contour or edge

of an object, creating the illusion of space and form, and when repeated, a pattern (The Kennedy

Center 2014). Lines used in design for such considerations as organizing, directing, or separating

suggest an emotion or creation of a rhythm (Rombough 2013). Lines separating parts in the

design are similar to separating the aspects of a master plan. Additionally, Rombough mentions

that oblique lines suggest movement, action, or change, while curved lines portray peace and

calm. Under normal circumstances, horizontal lines imply stability, while vertical lines imply

strength (Kristi and Duncan 2010). When overlapped in a jarring fashion or tilted to create

intersecting diagonals, lines naturally create tension. Lines transformed to planes and different

planes seem to increase volume, and lines may be organized to create visual effects that arouse

emotions.

Shape, a two-dimensional element, is the appearance of something, especially its outline, to

another object or to the surface. It is limited by a single edge, plane geometry (architectural

shapes, manufactured or inorganic), or organic (natural) and abstract types defined by lines and

areas of space. In terms of an object located in some space, shape is a geometrical description of

that space occupied by the object, as determined by its external boundary—abstracted from its

location and orientation in space, size, and other properties such as color, content, and material

composition (Geometry– AAA Math 2013). Shape creates pattern when repeated—organic or

geometric, positive or negative, objective or non-objective, and distorted or extended. Shape

creates rhythm when repeated, attention when varied in size, balance when changed in

placement. Space may be two or three dimensional—the area around, in between, within, or part

of an area; it is used in placement of elements to create relationships, focal points, and centers of

interest. Space can convey a variety of meanings: quality, solitude, loneliness, purity, spirituality,

openness, distance, infinity, and calm. Size is the varying proportions of shapes and lines. Size

can create a contrast to attract attention or organize the layout, with the most vital element being

large, and the least crucial element being small. In addition, value (the amount of lightness or

darkness) and color (warm or cold, combinations of hues) work together to create mood:

separation between light and dark creates a calm, quiet mood; extreme variations between light

and dark create drama or excitement (Rombough 2013). Value is created by manipulating media,

its lightness or darkness. Expression of the value through a variety of media creates movement,

the illusion of depth, and separates surfaces. Texture conveys mood and feeling, creating an

illusion of distance. Texture is the physical and optical feature of an object’s surface—whether

natural or manufactured, actual or simulated—and texture creates a “look up” surface, arouses

attention, influences lighting conditions, as well as adds richness and dimension.

Pattern is a regular arrangement of repeated elements. Emphasis is the focus of attention in

the composition, the special attention given to one part by color, size, and repetition. Contrast

implies a distinguishable difference between objects; it highlights differences in opposing

elements when they are placed adjacent to one another (Ignatius 2014). Balance—symmetrical or

asymmetrical is the weighted relationship between visual elements; it provides a sense of

equality, or a lack thereof. Proportion/scale is the ratio of one part of the composition to another,

the relationship between objects, and also between parts of a whole. Rhythm is the repetition of

an element to achieve movement in a composition; it creates interest through the repletion of

elements and a sense of movement or emphasis on an object. Harmony is the unity of all the

visual elements in a composition; it utilizes similar elements to create a pleasing design (Price

2013). Dominance draws the viewer’s focus to an area of interest. Composition is the

organization of the design elements into a unified whole. Repetition is the use of an element or

elements multiple times in a single composition. Variation is the differences among and between

elements in a composition. Unity is the grouping of elements and principles into a whole;

however, from a viewer’s perspective, unity lacks chaos and discomfort. The gradation of size or

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value creates a sense of direction and movement (Ignatius 2014). Recognizable from the

principles of design (or composition) as related to the organization of the whole is as harmony is

recognizable from correspondence, contrast distinguishable from different, balance distinct from

stability, order recognizable from the design of the organization, and unity as distinguishable

from collecting (Koberg, Bagnall and Bagnall 1974, 86).

Gestalt Laws and Principles of Everyday Urbanism

The Gestalt school’s Figure-Ground theory accommodates a standardized procedure for

enhancing the urban designer’s visual skills that focus on built environment while achieving a

good city form that satisfies its users. Particularly, the theory is able to face the relation between

groups of structures and, as a consequence, provide a sense of belonging to residents. The theory

looks at the urban environment as an entire object, not as separate parts; its rules, based on design

principles, support problem-solving methods. EU searches out not only the mythic aspect of the

ordinary and the ugly, but also helps stress the behavioral aspects in outdoor areas. The following

section develops a tactic to merge the urban visual rules from the Gestalt theory and the

principles of EU. These tactics assess the potential of some of the most common abnormal areas

in the Cairo metropolitan city, from the perspective of deformation as well as visual and

behavioral dissociative interactions.

Gestalt Laws

Generally, Gestalt can be understood as a dynamic perceptual process. The situation either

consists of various forms, organizations, and an entirety of form, or it separates catalysts into

figure elements (mostly in the center of attraction) and ground elements (the less perceptible

background). The underlying purpose of any exploration is in the consequence of the form being

whichever object meaningfully stands away from its background (Trancik 1986, 98-100). The

Gestalt theory’s concepts of visual perception are a form. The psycho-biological field forces on

the parallelism between the underlying neurological processes’ form and the perceptual

experience’s form (isomorphism) becoming the law or the rules of visual organization. Table 1

illustrates these laws (Gregory 1978, 161, 162); (Goldstein 1981, 193-195); (Gunay 2007, 97).

Everyday Urbanism Principles in the “Third Place”

“Third Place” is a term coined to express regular public meeting places, for instance, coffee

shops and general stores (Oldenburg 1991, xxix, 14); (Brunn, Williams and Zeigler 2003, 63).

The third place is considered a place for informal activities, considering that the first place is

home and the second is work. In addition, third places can be squares or plazas, pedestrian

sidewalks, gardens, and “leftover” spaces. For the community and social life to sustain local

democracy and a communal spirit, gathering places are essential, whether individually or beyond

the realms of home (first place) and work (second place). On one hand, this is all to

accommodate everyday city life, that is, the “practice of everyday life” in the public realm

(Crawford, Speaks and Mehrotra 2005); (Certeau 1984). On the other hand, the public realm is a

place admitting human rights, differences, variety, and city democracy (Sandercock 2003); (H.

Lefebvre 2007); (Lefebvre and Levich 1987).

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Table 1: Laws of the Gestalt School

Gestalt Laws Description

Proximity Elements that are close together, and the degree of distance

between sensations

Similarity Elements that look alike, describe the degree of sameness

to each other

Continuity Elements that show good continuance although interrupted

Closeness Area, Symmetry,

Common Fate/Region

Parts displaying the same compositional patterns

Connectedness A connecting element for two dissimilar objects or patterns

Closure Parts enclosing a void, the tendency to interpret closed

forms as pure shapes; people perceive the whole by filling

in the missing information

Closed forms A complete whole even if there are missing elements

Symmetry Providing for coherence of a composition

Alignment Lining up elements to form groups or wholes

Simplicity Legible parts and wholes Source: Author, based on (Reyes 2010)

In the first decade of the third millennium, EU emerged as radical empirical research, rather

than as normative (Crawford, Speaks and Mehrotra 2005). EU introduced a new accumulative

approach, but not an overarching design philosophy. It represents users’ attitudes toward the city,

in many different conditions, in existing urban areas as well as in remote areas. Moreover, EU

represents a trend for developing people’s attitudes in public spaces and places than an

orientation parallel with the public realm and the New Urbanism movement. It explores the

meaning of place in everyday life and experiences, where the power of a place becomes

embedded in everyday stories belonging to those whose lives continuously happen there,

including both work and events (Whyte 1980, 16); (Hayden 1995).

Everyday Urbanism is a shape shifting that changes in response to circumstances. It enables

use of the poorest areas in developing countries, where informal settlements mushroom, without

having any responsibilities of state management, either social or economic. EU tends to explore

the behavior of the most popular people in outdoor places. As Crawford asserts, everyday urban

design is situational and individual, responding to actual circumstances. While everyday space is

often described as generic (comprehensive and generalized), once closely monitored, it becomes

highly specific (Crawford, Speaks and Mehrotra 2005, 19). EU works from a bottom-up

approach, not planning decisions; EU intervenes. The people’s contribution is pivotal to the

success of the metropolitan city according to urban design dimensions: perceptual,

morphological, temporal, and functional (Crawford, Speaks and Mehrotra 2005). Otherwise

(Kelbaugh 2010, 18) describes EU as ubiquitous in informal settlements, in metropolitan cities

where the lower classes seek to attach residents to the higher classes and to economic or national

resources. Such settlements hardly exist in Europe.

Although EU is a method for considering the value of public places, it focuses on exploring

often unnoticed activities that occur in everyday life and that transform across time (H. Lefebvre

2007), (Crawford 2013). The four key principles of EU are:

“Re-Familiarize Urban Environments”; “making strange” unique experience

(Koolhaas 2013).

“Looking Around and Paying Attention” versus visual heteroglossia. The second

term means that everywhere one looks, there are startling juxtapositions of scale,

image, building types, and styles (Crawford, Speaks and Mehrotra 2005).

9


“Public Time and Publicness”: Public time means everyday life with temporal

dimensions, highly structured by time: night and day, the cycles of the year, the

seasons, daily work, the weekend, the vacation, and holidays (Crawford 2013,

28,30, Oldenburg 1991). Publicness refers to the relevance of everyday life in the

public realm (Habermas 1962, 51,52).

“Experiential Qualities”; sensory, that is, successful urban places combine with the

physical attributes of their users (Montgomery 1998, 93).

Tactical Approach for Raising City Potentialities

There is a well-established relationship between the geometries of urban spaces for meeting

visual quality and what is happening in the space (Figure 7). Regularly, events have meanings

arising from the nature of the users’ daily lives in urban spaces. Both urban geometry and public

life express the emerging, underlying meanings of the puzzling connection between them. In this

sense, the study denotes the following to examine the relationships between the principles of both

designated and displayed possible meanings (coherent/contradictory) in any urban environment.

These meanings are compiled based on the criteria of “visual quality” and “street for people”

through the Gestalt laws. The complied principles can be presented in three axes, as displayed in

Figure 8.

Figure 7: The proposed approach

Source: The author

10


Figure 8: The three axes of analysis

Source: The author

The Egyptian Context: The Problem of Visualization

This research was conducted on a selected a district in Cairo, where the author resides. The

author’s residency there provides clear discovery of the district’s context over seven years.

Generally, the district serves various functions: residential, educational, administrative, and for

cemeteries. In addition, the site is surrounded by military uses to the south and southwest (Figure

9 and Figure 10Figure 3). The site’s boundaries were set within walking distance (300 m). Some

photos were recently taken to depict the chaotic elements of visualization in the district’s built

environment (Figure 10).

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Figure 9: The case study site Source: The author

Figure 10: Chaotic visualization at the site. The symbols in (Figure 9) refer to the location and direction of the

photographer’s position.

Students’ Hostel-Ain Shams University

Common Wealth Cemeteries

Ain Shams University “Girls’ Branch”

Residential Area+ Administrative Area

Residential Area+ Commercial Area

0

50 100

Meters North

4

2

3

1

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The Analytical Study

For testing the proposed approach in a real context, this section presents an analytical study.

Figure 11 displays the Figure-Ground status of the environment. Based on Figure 7, the research

proposes a module for assessing the impact of the design elements’ geometry on the site’s

evoked meaning. For this purpose, the research design is a matrix/module. The matrix discovers

the relationship between EU, columns A and B, and the principles of Figure-Ground Theory:

Row A, extending to that relationship’s effect on the site’s meaning received by its users.

Figure 11: Figure-Ground of the site

Source: The author

Outcomes and Discussion

At this stage, the author collected all the remarks based on site observation and the author’s

residency. The extracted characteristics remarks fill the matrix illustrated in (Figure 12). The

three axes of the proposed matrix are based on Column A, Row A, and Row B in Figures 8 and

9. These remarks can be summarized as follows:

The principle of good geometry has a direct relationship with some principles of

EU. This relationship can be regarded in, for example, Pattern with Pay attention

and Dominance with Re-familiarization. This direct relationship appears, also, in

the geometrical principles with the meanings evoked at the site. Once a good

pattern occurred, eight positive meanings and three controversial relationships

13


emerged. The principle of Re-familiarization achieved full relationship with all the

principles of geometry.

Figure 12: The proposed matrix

Source: The author

14


The principles, for instance, Social interaction and Re-familiarization, have a direct

relationship with all geometrical principles.

The geometrical principles in Row A have a semi-direct relationship with some

principles of EU. Both gradation and public time have a semi-direct relationship

because gradation is not considered in establishing the constructed environment. In

addition, this is a relationship caused by the missing linkage of urban areas, which

plays an important role in the gradation principle.

Although the meaning evoked in any designed place should reflect a direct

relationship with gestalt principles, a feeling of safety has a semi-direct relationship

with the main principles of, for example, dominance, composition, and repetition.

Conversely, the principles of EU, for example, legibility and experience quality,

have the same semi-direct relationship with an initial meaning for good city form.

Quality of experience and knowledge depend on the typologies of people illustrated

in the matrix, Column B. In re-habilitation or new development projects, the green

points on the matrix should be classified for each target group.

The principles of good geometry and EU have some controversial relationships

because of proximity versus legibility. The more proximity for several elements of

good city form is achieved, the less legible the features (node, landmark, path, and

edge) in the case study site. Generally, users create verification of proximity to

achieve maximum land value.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned

In the present era, the Egyptian urban population grows exponentially and synchronously with

increasing urban policies that affect development. In Cairo’s development, there is ambiguity

between Planning and Urban Design. An Urban Designer needs to undertake a stronger role in

the city’s construction, more necessarily in the first stage of specialization in city design. The

specialization has expected to isolate buildings more from the surroundings, even with all the

regulations imposed by city planners and designers. Those designers reclaim outdoor spaces as

unused or “leftover” spaces. From this point of view, the urban designer must deal with the urban

environment, and, while doing so, face several different challenges. First, urban design

professional practice is subject to the scientific method required to meet minimum standards.

These standards attempt to view urban spaces between buildings as spaces that can be shaped

into “urban rooms” with urban character. In addition, in the public realm, streets are vital. The

fields of interest encompass several issues beginning with the following: a) rehabilitating and

reclaiming existing urban communities: historic preservation in cities, favorite places, and

cultural areas, as well as development of new urban growth areas that have interest in

formulating development guidelines; b) the control of urbanity meets the principles of

sustainability effects in the urban areas over time, in light of the determinants of urban character

and architectural characteristics toward urban aesthetics. In addition, the control of urbanity sets

up the use of urban design principles for creating livable cities.

Several places, especially Cairo, Egypt, are missing out on the opportunity of being

beautiful. The principles of EU can be compatible with geometrical principles to create new

value in the Egyptian context. This relationship gives direct/semi-direct relationships to the

meanings of places that host users and their activities. Additionally, the most important issue in

urban design is public life in outdoor spaces. Some research literature deals with public life in

developed countries, while also considering that public life holds many experiences in

developing countries as well. Specifically, in the local experience of both informal and planned

communities reflect the context of a uniquely Egyptian public life. Furthermore, in Egypt, most

actions for developing informal settlements take place at the level of urban planning, not urban

design. As a fact mentioned in several studies, good geometry in public space adds value to

15


people’s attitudes in outdoor spaces. Thus, this article contributes by examining the relationship

between the geometrical analyses of the Gestalt School and daily public life. This relationship

directly impacts the meaning of places that users gain in their public life. Using this relationship,

the researcher attempted to provide methods of raising city potentialities in a residential area of

Cairo, Egypt.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Abeer Elshater: Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning, Ain Shams University,

Cairo, Egypt

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The International Journal of the Constructed Environment explores, in a broad-ranging and interdisciplinary way, human configurations of the environment and the interactions between the constructed, social and natural environments. The journal brings together the work of practitioners, researchers, and teachers in the architectonic and landscape arts. The resulting articles weave between the empirical and the theoretical, research and its application, the ideal and the pragmatic. They document and reflection upon spaces which are in their orientations private, public, or commercial.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites presentations of practice—including experimental forms of documentation and exegeses that can with equal validity be interrogated through a process of academic peer review. This, for instance, might take the form of a series of images and plans, with explanatory notes that articulate with other, significantly similar or different and explicitly referenced places, sites or material objects.

The International Journal of the Constructed Environment is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2154-8587

Documents

Principles of Gestalt laws and everyday urbanism