The above image is a combination of a few of the major issues within the public realm that I have identified- A) physical accommodation, B) social accommodation, and C) climate.
A) physical accommodation- while the city's public areas are largely connected via the Corniche to go to them or to other spaces within the larger city, a car is required. The city is very much organized with the vehicle as the primary urban user over the pedestrian. Small sidewalks and roundabouts make it very difficult to move within the downtown area, while the increasing sprawl negates the pedestrian option as one moves away fro the center. Thus, above, the roundabout acts as the divider (possibly economically as well as physically) between the public spaces on either side.
B) social accommodation- the city's main forms of public space- souq, mall, and park are barred to migrant laborers on their only day off on Fridays, as these are considered 'family days' while on other days the laborers have little available time to utilize these spaces, if they could get to them. In the image above workers are at left, cut off from the basic mall section on the right both by the issue of the car as well as social norms, represented by the red crosswalk hands (there have been incidences of workers being prevented to cross to the same side of the street as public parks or souqs). The result is often that workers create public spaces out of underutilized areas such as the parking lot pictured above.
C) climate- barring workers from public spaces directly relates to issues of climate, especially in the summer- if these men and women are barred from most public air-conditioned places, it becomes somewhat hazardous to their health to be out in public on their days off for months at a time.
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