In rapidly growing Saudi cities like Mecca and Jeddah, population diversity and expansion have increased the need to improve residents’ quality of life. As part of Saudi Vision 2030, both cities have launched major redevelopment initiatives that replace old neighbourhoods and relocate residents to newly developed housing. This study evaluates residents’ perceptions of indoor environmental quality across different housing environments, reflecting changes in residential context, building typology, and interior conditions. The study adopted a quantitative approach to gather data from 80 participants who were impacted by demolition projects and moved to newer urban neighbourhoods; the analysis used descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA to analyse the obtained results. The results revealed that for most of the environmental factors, the ANOVA test showed no significant differences between premodern and modern houses, yet the descriptive statistics showed that modern houses were perceived slightly more positively than older houses. Furthermore, the results showed that, in both premodern and modern houses, thermal comfort was identified as one of the most important parameters, followed by indoor air quality and lighting, while acoustics ranked as the least important.
Bagais et al. (Tue,) studied this question.