Open spaces are no longer luxuries but are indispensable amenities to create a more sustainable society [
1]. The UN established specific targets for SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) 11, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable [
2]. One of its targets is to provide universal access to green and public spaces, in particular, for women and children, older persons, and persons with disabilities [
3]. Many developed countries were able to successfully improve their green and public space qualities and accessibilities in past decades; whereas, in developing countries, the high financial cost and scarcity of proper lands remained the chief obstacles in creating better public open spaces. Faced with challenges in improving green and public spaces in developing countries, more flexible design approaches and policies became necessary to maximize the utilization of existing resources. According to the UN-Habitat (2015), “Public open space does not include the areas devoted to public facilities—e.g., schools, stadiums, hospitals, airports, waterworks, or military bases—that are not open to the general public” [
4] (p. 2). However, these non-public open spaces associated with public facilities can provide opportunities to revitalize communities, especially when a municipality does not have enough resources to secure public open spaces. Recently, many scholars and policy makers have paid special attention to integrating university campuses to the existing urban fabrics in order to provide better open space service through institutional partnership without spending public funds.
This research explores the possibility of sharing spaces of the university campus with the public in Greater Cairo (GC), Egypt—a case representing high-density urban areas in developing countries confronting multiple urgent urban problems requiring immediate actions. Even though there are many successful cases sharing university facilities and amenities with neighborhoods in the U.S. and Europe, the research assumes that the Cairene perception about sharing institutional spaces can be different from that of the Western world due to different cultural and social backgrounds. The goal of the research is as follows: (1) To examine the general perception of university community and adjacent neighborhoods about sharing various campus spaces; and (2) to find out realistic solutions to improve city-wide public space service by establishing a partnership between the university and the city based on the survey and the in-depth interviews. The research primarily focused on the open space amenity of the university, which can be easily shared with citizens without additional investment; however, it does not limit the amenities to open spaces, also exploring the possibility to open other university facilities to the public. In terms of terminology, the research regards public space as the concept including both public open spaces and public facilities such as libraries, classrooms, and sports facilities. The privatized public space in the research refers to both open spaces and facilities owned and managed by the private sector, which requires a specific fee to enter or use them, which is typical in Cairo. The semi-public space means that both open spaces and facilities are owned and managed by the municipality but dedicated to specific users with a specific fee.
1.1. The Urban Landscape of Cairo
The Cairene landscape has been affected by its multicultural history in addition to climatic, political, and religious factors, resulting in high density and a compact urban form. In medieval Cairo, public open spaces were dedicated to business, military, and religious uses [
5]. Some private outdoor spaces were opened to the public during special occasions, such as festivals and royal weddings [
6]. By 1867, several infrastructure projects established a foundation of the modern metropolis with the construction of modernized streets, squares, gardens, railroads, water network, stabilization of the riverbanks, and draining of seasonal ponds [
6,
7]. The urban situation of Cairo changed under the pressure of constant urban population growth. In the 1970s and 1980s, rapid growth of urban areas increased unplanned settlements, which occupied a large amount of agricultural lands adjacent to the city, causing undesirable impacts such as insufficient infrastructure, urban service deterioration, and slum growth [
6]. During the 1980s and 1990s, many public open spaces were swept by high-end commercial establishments like hotels, clubs, and restaurants [
5]. Due to the high cost of developing desert areas, high land value of open spaces in the city, and tendency to pursue short-term revenue, the market took over urban open spaces for new developments [
5,
6,
7,
8]. As a result, open spaces decreased, significantly deteriorating living conditions in the inner city during this period. Nowadays, most of the new residential developments are gated communities seeking isolation from the surrounding low-quality urban environment [
9].
UN-Habitat defines public spaces as “all places publicly owned or of public use, accessible, and enjoyable by all for free and without a profit motive” [
10] (p. 6). Not much different from the situation of many developing countries, most of the public open spaces are in poor quality, failing to attract diverse social user groups in Egypt [
11]. As an attempt to improve the quality of public open spaces, the Egyptian government started to require a membership or a small entrance fee to use open spaces. However, the upper- and middle-income residents prefer privatized open spaces, looking for better amenities with a diversity of programs [
8]. Moore criticized such tendency of increasing exclusive open spaces: “You have to pay for the public life” [
12]. Developed countries can easily invest in public parks to create a more sustainable urban environment, while developing countries usually give a low priority to building or improving their public open spaces compared to other projects. The World Health Organization (WHO) (2012) states that the minimum standard of the green space shares per capita should be 9 m
2 within 15 min of walking distance from home [
13] (
Figure 1). According to the GOPP et al. (2012), green space shares per capita in GC Metropolitan Region is 3 m
2 [
14]. The National Organization for Urban Harmony (NOUH) (2010) puts a target to increase open and green space shares per capita and to reach 7 m
2 in the Nile basin area and 5 m
2 in deserted areas as a minimum requirement for the existing cities [
15] (
Table 1). However, green space in the GC area barely changes, maintaining the status of 3 m
2 per capita, which is far below the standard of WHO.
According to NOUH (2010), the semi-public spaces, dedicated to specific users, such as social and sports clubs, school sports fields, or youth centers, could be regarded as public spaces only if they are less than half of the total area of the public spaces [
15]. Public open spaces at the district level should be within 15 min or 1000 m walking distance from home, with an area of 3 feddan and at least one being 5 feddan (1 feddan = 4200 m
2) [
15]. Public open spaces in the neighborhood-level should be within 400 m walking distance from home [
15]. According to Saikia, in order to ensure the proper use of parks, “it is very important that the parks are located in places where they are needed the most” [
16]. Talen (2010) stated three normative principles related to the spatial distribution of parks: “proximity, diversity, and social need” [
17]. Cairo needs to improve the spatial distribution of public open spaces; however, it is hard to find proper solutions because of limited funding and lack of effective strategies for implementation.
1.2. A New Paradigm Shift Towards an Open-University Campus
According to recent researches and case studies, university campuses shared with the public can provide multiple positive effects to the city, revitalizing adjacent communities, creating more job opportunities, enhancing ecological services and providing safe and sociable public gathering places. Even though the first universities were products of medieval Europe around the 11th century, the first university campuses appeared in Oxford and Cambridge around the 17th century [
18]. Their designs were influenced by the cloistered monastery, an arrangement of typically enclosed buildings in an introverted design promoting isolation from the outside environment. By the 1770s, the term “campus” was first used to describe the entire ground of Princeton University where the college was located in a building along one side of green space [
19].
Grumprecht (2007) regards that the park-like model of the university campus is largely an American invention [
18]. It was landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted who established the foundation for university campuses as a park-like setting in the late 19th and the early 20th century. Olmsted’s intention for the campus design was not much different than that for the public parks, promoting the physical and mental health of users [
20]. The American model of the university campus was typically located in a rural environment to be separated from the disorder of the urban context [
19]. This model was exported to Europe, Latin America and Asia to be the international standard for university master planning in the last century.
However, Haar (2011) noted that the paradigm shift for university campus planning has been witnessed form the late 20th century [
21]. Universities have been trying to expand their campus toward the city, merging boundaries with adjacent neighborhoods. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) campus expansion around Kendall Square, Harvard University’s new Allston campus, and the University of Chicago’s expansion cooperating with surrounding communities are good examples of “the campus integrated with the city” model. This alternative model was applied in many university new master planning projects in the 21st century. The University of Pennsylvania’s strategic masterplan, “Penn Connects,” expanded university properties to neighborhoods enlarging public open spaces of the city [
22]. The University of Washington recently completed “2018 Campus Master Plan (CMP),” mixing the campus facilities with adjacent urban fabrics [
23]. In the U.K., the University of Cambridge is leading the development of Cambridge through the “North West Cambridge Development Masterplan [
24].” (see
Figure 2 and
Figure 3)
The new relationship between university and city has been largely discussed in the academia as well as in the field of practice [
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34]. Rashidi (2013) classified the integration between university and city into a physical, socio-culture, and economic relationship [
25]. Fassi, Galluzzo and Rogel (2016) searched the possibility to open the Milano Bovisa Durando campus to the public. Their research found that residents considered campus boundaries with gates as a restricted barrier, making it hard for them to access the university campus [
26]. Dalton et al. (2018) reviewed recent methods of campus planning [
27]. They organized campus planning trends into three scales: the campus park, the campus-community interface, and the larger campus district. Their findings show that many of the current campus master planning projects do not limit their boundary to the traditional campus area but expand to the larger city context. Herbert (2018) examined a recent shift in the university campus planning and design, expanding its territories to the various contexts of the city [
28]. He analyzed the principal lines of campus design into three topics: campus in context, estate layout, and mixing of uses. Way (2018) examined the new master planning approach of the University of Washington as a case study. She concluded that “it suggests an alternative approach to how the academy engages the city and its productive potential” through the campus design as a good urban design [
29].
If the researches mentioned above focused on the physical planning of the campus, there are also literatures which examined a flexible governance structure and an open partnership between the university and the public. Bringle and Hatcher (2002) redefined campus-community partnerships through the concept of service-learning. In order to develop healthy partnerships, they structured the phases of relationships as initiation, development, maintenance, and dissolution; and the dynamics of relationships as exchanges, equity, and distribution of power [
30]. Martin et al. (2005) examined the innovative partnership structure for universities to work cooperatively to address shared issues. They identified seven taxonomies for a successful, innovative university and community partnership: service-learning, service provision, faculty involvement, student volunteerism, community in the classroom, applied research, and institutional change [
31]. Burning et al. (2006) tried to broaden the definition of community engagement of universities through the research. The results showed that community members who participated in a campus event more actively showed favorable responses to the university [
32]. McHugh and Meister (2004) introduced successful models for strategic campus facility planning through the campus-public partnership and through the case study of DePaul University in Chicago [
33]. Porter (2007) points out how university campuses can serve as socio-cultural hubs hosting and sponsoring diverse community activities. Universities can enhance the local economy through various initiatives, ranging from “providing jobs and developing real estate to offering advice to startups and conducting basic research that catalyzes and supports local industries” [
34].
Even though many recent literatures encourage to integrate the campus with the city and share amenities with surrounding neighborhoods through healthy campus-community partnerships, it should be noted that those literatures are mostly based on the cases of the U.S. and Europe. Planning strategies and policies proven to be successful in the Western world frequently fail in developing countries due to different economic status and social context. In addition, Cairo has a different climate and culture from most of the cases introduced in the literatures. Therefore, delicate approaches and on-site field studies are required when trying to change the existing pattern of spatial use.