Landscape Architectural Scenarios for Creating Safe Open Spaces in Residential Streets to Enhance Children’s Active Play in a Saudi Arabian Metropolis

Abstract

This study generates several landscape architectural scenarios to create safe open spaces
that promote children’s active play in the residential streets of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a rapidly
growing city with inadequate provision of functional public open spaces per person. As a method,
we first introduced 17 landscape architecture (LA) students to best practices of healthy and livable
residential streets. We then instructed LA students to individually develop safe open space
scenarios to enhance children’s active play in a typical residential street in Jeddah, which resulted
in 17 scenarios. Next, we assessed students’ scenarios through six indicators to identify their
strengths and weaknesses. We found that most of the 17 scenarios achieved the highest strengths
in providing solutions for calming traffic, accommodating different play activities, and adopting
effective design treatments to physically separate the proposed open spaces from traffic. We also
found that the 17 scenarios are classified under four main design strategies: Building Over the
Street, Traffic Island Integration, Expanded Sidewalk Verges, and Temporary Street Function
Change. With their 17 interpreted landscape architectural scenarios, the four main design
strategies can inform other cities with similar urban aspects and provide the health benefits of
such an open space. The strategies highlight several new management issues, such as new open
space locations, approvals of nearby neighbors, access to private garages, the current on-street
parking strategy, and capital and operational financing. Further research is required to investigate
the effectiveness of the developed scenarios in making children physically active.