Experiencing Wellbeing in Streets: The Case of Badaro and Its Restorative Landscape Features

Abstract

In rapidly urbanizing cities, where limited green space is available, streetscapes are considered valuable outdoor environments. Given the emergent evidence on restorative benefits of outdoor spaces and small urban green areas such pocket parks and residential gardens, and the fact that the streets are the only green spaces left in Beirut, the question of whether these urban typologies can promote wellbeing is a relatable one. To our knowledge, no published work has looked closely to the restorative aspects of streetscapes. This thesis looks to identify specific landscape features, focusing particularly on social, built and nature-related features, that promote restoration and wellbeing in streets.

This qualitative study is the first to examine Badaro as a case study and investigate peoples’ experience through conducting go-along interviews to identify the restorative streetscape features. The go-along findings are analyzed thematically and compared with literature to highlight the most significant features within the local context of Beirut.

From a landscape perspective, the results emphasize that presence of other people and informal gathering spots in the streets are considered restorative. The visual characteristics of Badaro’s architecture in terms of simple and maintained landmarks, presence of both modern and old buildings next to each other as well as presence of landmarks of protected heritage and even walkability in internal streets are also important for restoration. The results similarly indicate that vegetation plays a role in the promotion of wellbeing yet to a certain extent as there are specific aspects that are only recognized such as presence of general street greenery, presence of street trees of certain qualities in terms of specific species, symmetric arrangement, high amounts, maintained shape, big size and even presence of bird sounds are vital for wellbeing. Finally, this thesis proposes a set of design recommendations to assist the design and planning for optimal restorative streetscapes for health and wellbeing of people.