Muscat City Expansion and Accessibility to the Historical Core: Space Syntax Analysis

Expansion of cities is an international phenomenon that occurs mainly due to population growth. With the expansion of the new cities, the accessibility to the old cities might be affected. The focus of this research is on the governorate of Muscat in Oman and its old city, Greater Mutrah. Our aim is to investigate how the expansion of Muscat had affected the accessibility to the old city. This city was selected because of its inherent value in history, economy, and tourism in the country and the region. In order to understanding how the accessibility is affected in terms of vehicle movement, space syntax theory and its associated methodology -i.e. Axial Maps- is used. Using DepthMapX software, Integration radius 3 was calculated for the old city before and after the expansion of Muscat, and the data were analyzed statistically. The results showed that the expansion has positively affected the accessibility to the old city while altering the spatial structure within it. This paper contributes to interpret the spatial characteristics of the street networks and how these characteristics affect accessibility, and subsequently tourism attraction, to old cities.