Morphological Changes of Urban Nodes and Their Effect on Urban Mobility and Transportation Modes in Heliopolis

The transformation of urban forms and the organization of automobility networks were the main factors affecting urban transportation and mobility throughout the years. Moreover, the relationship between movement and urban forms shapes the city’s urban mobility. The research significance lies behind documenting and analyzing the situation in Heliopolis urban nodes after the major additions in flyovers and intersections in the favor of vehicular modes of commuting in 2019 so that it provides an opportunity for future studies in this field. However, these intrusions neglected the vital role of urban nodes and their effect on mobility in Heliopolis. This study’s objective is to investigate the morphological changes in urban nodes resulting from Heliopolis’ new urban development and review it according to previous urban theories to clarify its impact on the city’s urban mobility and transportation modes. The study will be conducted through a comparative analysis between Heliopolis urban nodes before and after the aforementioned development. Moreover, the study will apply a morphological analysis to investigate the transformation of the urban nodes (Heliopolis Square and El-Hegaz Square) physical form by abstracting the urban elements to clarify the transformation of the street patterns, geometrical form, and movement in the squares. Thereupon, the paper expounds on whether these intrusions enhanced or diminished the ability of urban nodes to serve the city’s urban mobility. The results of this review demonstrate that this new development affected positively vehicular movement in the selected nodes but affected negatively walkability. Furthermore, this development removed the tramlines which were one of the identity elements and a traditional mobility mode in Heliopolis. Consequently, the results also show that there is a mutual relationship between mobility and identity. This provides new opportunities for future scientific researches to understand to what extent identity affects mobility.