Assessing the compliance of architectural design of social housing models in new cities with social needs of relevant residents

This paper studies, analyzes and evaluates the architectural design of social housing models in Egyptian new cities in terms of the availability of social needs along with their compliance with residents’ own needs. Social needs under investigation are the need for communication, privacy, containment, protection, symbolism, functionality, and personality achievement. The main concern of research is to introduce a quantitative index expresses the degree of compliance of such needs with desires of the low-income social class targeted to reside in such projects. The research methodology combined three major methods to measure compliance between requirements of such class and the architectural design of the project through employing specific social class and their housing project within New El-Minya City as a case study. First, a theoretical analysis of the case study housing model design along with its urban context is conducted. Also, assessment, analysis, and observation by photography are used to specify modifications made by residents to their residential units to fit their social needs. Finally, structured interviews are conducted with people from the social class targeted to be accommodated in such residential models in New El-Minya City. The interviews aimed to measure their priorities in terms of social needs and the needs’ achievable design features. The interviews then analyzed by transforming the qualitative data collected from the sample into quantitative data to identify merits and demerits of design in terms of meeting the different social needs of this class expressed by a specific quantitative number. Results of applying these methods showed random modifications made by residents to compensate their missing requirements. The proposed quantitative index’s results showed a huge design deficiency in meeting the social requirements of residents. The case study design matches the social needs of residents’ social class by only (50.3%). This was referred to miss communication between designers and users in early design stage. In addition, the wrong policy of adoption of a single housing model to be built all over the country without taking into consideration the different social priorities and needs of the same social class in different communities.