Correlation between accessibility to urban open spaces and city livability: case of Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Biskra city, Algeria

Open spaces, such as parks, plazas, and urban voids, play a crucial role in enhancing human well-being and significantly contribute to the overall quality of urban life. However, many of these spaces remain underused or unvisited despite having good design and adequate services, whereas others attract high accessibility but limited engagement. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between spatial accessibility and walkability in urban open spaces by linking configurational spatial characteristics (integration and visibility) to observed pedestrian usage patterns. This study examines factors, including accessibility patterns, user behavior, urban configuration, and movement dynamics, that contribute to achieving sustainability goals, particularly in the social and economic dimensions related to commercial land use. This research adopts quantitative and qualitative approaches, utilizing Space Syntax analysis through DepthMap software to examine the city’s spatial structure, along with on-site techniques such as gate counting. The results indicate that the pedestrian movement patterns observed at the gates did not consistently correspond to the spatial configuration of the two sites, suggesting a weak relationship between configurational accessibility measures and the actual use of the open spaces studied.