Success and Sustainability Criteria for Streets: The Case of Ismet Inonu Boulevard (Salamis Road), Famagusta

ABSTRACT: Streets in cities in addition to being movement channels provide an urban context for social interaction however, nowadays the role of streets as movement channels is overlapping its role as public open space and streets are becoming more isolated. Car dependency and technological development encourage people to stay in their own private while decreases using public open spaces and declining urban life. Developing and designing streets for vehicle is the result of this privatization. As a result there is a need to care about designing street in such a way that become more attractive for people and encourage social interaction in order to increasing the quality of urban life. This research focuses on the designing streets in order to make them attractive and successful public open spaces as streets have potential to become the most livable organs of the city. With this in mind theoretical framework of this research forms to understand the characteristics of street for being a more successful and livable public open space and in continue defining criteria for sustainable and promote them into the case study of Isment Inonu (Salamis Road) to make it as successful and sustainable public open space for the city of Famagusta. Salamis Road as the main access for students of Eastern Mediterranean University`s student to the city have potential to become as the main public open space for the city while Famagusta has serious lack of public open spaces. As a theoretical framework, characteristics of street as physical, functional and social are studied then the concept of sustainable street and its characteristics are explored thorough documentary survey. Then based on the main aim of the study which is evaluating and checking all aspects of Salamis Road as public open space to find out its potential and weaknesses regarding pedestrian satisfaction of the place and existing facilities, Salamis Road will be evaluated through three main characteristics of streets by means of observation, site surveying and questionnaire methods of analysis. At the end based on the analysis result which highlight the potential and weaknesses of Salamis Road in line with theoretical frame work which define successful and sustainable streets` characteristics, a guideline will be defined in order to make Salamis Road a successful and sustainable public open space. Keywords: Public Open Space, Successful Street, Sustainable Street, Boulevard, Salamis Road. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………