Quality Evaluation of Public Pedestrian Spaces: The Case of Abdali Development in Amman city

Public spaces are places where people gatherand practice their daily activities. Squares and streets givethe city identity and urban character, whether historical ormodern. Since ancient times, public squares have occupiedan important place in city planning; they are used forpolitical, social, religious, and recreational activities.Recently, open public spaces and squares have taken on thecharacter of recreation and comfort spaces and are used forsocial activities. The quality and evaluation of the featuresof public spaces in the city and the criteria for success andvalue of public spaces are addressed in this paper. Theimpact of physical and social elements is quantified tomeasure the success of the public place. The new Abdalidevelopment project in Amman city in Jordan is selected asan example of newly constructed public spaces to becomea new city center. The analysis of physical and socialdimensions and SWOT analysis are performed to evaluatethe quality of public spaces. These elements are consideredaccording to the respondents' replies to the questionnaireand measured according to an assessment equation ofpublic place quality. A chart of the public space's quality iscreated to demonstrate the results in numeric values, andconclusions are drawn accordingly. This paper concludesthat the quality and success of public spaces is the result of taking into account physical and social factors in the design and planning stages to create successful public spaces.