Assessment Quality of Life in the Urban Environment; Case Study: Sheikh Zayed City of Cairo

Quality of life is a multidimensional issue which is considered in a wide-range of professions, such as economic, environment, psychological welfare, social, urban planning, healthcare, and other fields. Urban design is the collaborative and multi-disciplinary process of shaping the physical setting for life in cities; it involves the design of buildings, groups of buildings, spaces and landscapes, and the establishment of frameworks and processes that facilitate successful development. Urban areas are negatively affected by rapid population growth, unplanned city development, insufficient physical environments, social, economic and cultural problems. The Publica report concluded that there is broad agreement that quality of life is ‘the level to which individuals may feel their lives to be happy, active, sociable, interesting and meaningful’, this can also be understood as a hierarchy of needs from shelter, food and safety up to belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. Our quality of life is the most precious gift we have and the hope is that this framework can become a collective resource for everyone seeking to improve our built environment. Given that urban planning significantly impacts human health and the level of satisfaction, this research focuses on two issues: the quality of urban life, as it is one of the international new issues which focuses on two types of assessments: (a) the objective assessments in which evaluates the built environment that surround the person and (b) the individuals’ subjective assessment on their level of quality of life. The other issue is the importance of considering the concept of QOUL when designing urban communities in Cairo and dealing with unsafe and unplanned areas.For the purposes of this study, urban life in The Sheikh Zayed City of Cairo as the most important new urban communities of Egypt, was investigated according to the quality of life indicator to form a more in-depth and comprehensive approach to deal with the challenges that meet architects, urban planners, and developers when solving the housing problems in new urban communities. From the study we conclude that the houses we inhabit, the neighborhoods in which those houses sit, the communities that live in those neighborhoods, and the facilities, services, transport and open spaces that plug into those neighbourhoods – all contribute to our health and wellbeing. We realize that every community is different and that local capacity is often limited.