Urban street imageability in Manama old town, Bahrain

Abstract

Urban Design Quality Assessment has been developed as an important approach for the study of urban quality with several criteria and measures. This research used Imageability for the assessment of urban design quality in the streets of old Manama, the capital of the Kingdome of Bahrain. It has been going through many developments that brought many changes to the urban quality of the city. These developments have been mainly concentrated in the northern part of the city giving it a new modern character. Old Manama, on the southern side of the new city, kept its traditional urban structure. There is always a need to study the quality of urban design in such situations to understand the relationship between traditionality and modernity, and continuity and change. The assessment depended mainly on a field survey of some streets with observation and photographing. The photos then were analyzed to explore the quality Imageability through these streets. The research shows that Imageability has distinguished aspects in old Manama but still there is a need for improvement. This research also highlights the subjectivity and inaccuracy of using such criteria and measures for the study of urban character and still there is a lot to be done to improve these criteria and tools.