Over the past two decades, global cities have been addressing climate challenges by transforming their gray infrastructural spaces through climate-adaptive and nature-based regeneration processes. These efforts also aim to tackle local ecological, social, and economic disparities. Despite the prevailing focus on technical and performance-based approaches, research on climate-adaptive, nature-based regeneration of streetscapes remains limited and has yet to significantly influence design-driven approaches to urban regeneration. This paper seeks to address these gaps by emphasizing the importance of spatial dimensions in overcoming current theoretical and operational limitations. It introduces a research experience that aims to leverage the potential of design to promote climate-adaptive, nature-based green regeneration of streetscapes and to integrate this approach into mainstream practices through a “research-by-design” methodology. To achieve this, an operational framework has been developed and is presented here, offering both conceptual and practical insights for creating climate-adaptive, nature-based streetscapes. Following the proposed methodology, two pilot design cases are introduced and discussed, both located in the Italian city of Matera: Piccianello and La Martella. This iterative process aims to establish a framework for sustainable, long-term urban resilience, making cities greener, more adaptive, and more equitable.

Purpose: This study aims to demonstrate how women's involvement in urban planning and design in Gulf cities improves urban space's inclusivity and strengthens identity through cultural heritage revitalisation. It also promotes the participation of women in architecture and city-making by showcasing how shaping urban spaces offers local communities opportunities for social interaction and a more inclusive environment.Design/methodology/approach: The paper critically compares two case studies in the Gulf region—one in the United Arab Emirates and the other in Bahrain—according to four inclusion criteria: context connection, cultural sensitivity, community engagement and choices of amenities. These inclusion criteria are also applied to an experimental project by women architects' students in Saudi Arabia to inspire the future female architects of the Gulf region. From urban to architectural scales, the project offers a glance into the heritage design by women architects.Findings: In light of this critical analysis, this study highlights the sensitivity to issues related to the revitalisation of urban areas by women architects. The case studies identified show the role of the female architect in making architecture and linking cultural heritage with contemporary themes. These projects stitch the past with the present and link cultural identity with aspects related to sustainable architecture. Therefore, valorising women's architectural experience is necessary to contribute to sustainable urban development in the Gulf region and beyond.Originality/value: The present study addresses the importance of the role of women architects in the Gulf region. The research promotes the full and equal participation of women in the architecture and construction of the city to recognise their achievements by increasing their involvement in the work in a more integrated and balanced way.

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to urban environments, mostly affecting already vulnerable communities and ecosystems. While Climate Action (13th Sustainable Development Goal) still tends to focus on economic shifts and technological fixes, urban design and planning can play a crucial role in climate adaptation processes, enhancing socio-ecological resilience, while improving inclusivity, livability, wellbeing for all, opening to sustainable development scenarios. By focusing on nature-based solutions (NBS) and green infrastructure (GI), the contribution, which is part of an ongoing research, aims at identifying issues, challenges, and best practices to operationalize climate resilient adaptation through urban nature design and planning process and actions for neighborhood scale’s regeneration. Through a qualitative methodology, three neighborhood case studies, recognized as best practices, will be compared in order to understand, issue and procedures related to the implementation of climate NBS and GI inside urban regeneration design and planning process.eworks towards equitable and livable urban futures.

The regeneration of urban streetscapes through Nature-based Solutions is crucial for achieving climate neutrality and resilience. However, design research is limited to date and needs to impact current design and planning practices. Ongoing research attempts to go beyond present gaps to define an operational methodology and guidelines to mainstream streetscape’s climate-resilient nature-based regeneration. The research adopts a Research-by-Design approach, structured in three integrative phases: (i) Research of Design, (ii) Research through Design, (iii) Research for Design. The contribution will go through the first two phases by applying and cross-testing the operational methodology in two neighbourhoods in Matera, Italy and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Integrating the energy issue in the regeneration of neighbourhoods influences the entire metabolism of the urban settlement. It opens up a reflection, within the disciplines of the project, on approaches, methods, and tools to make the energy transition operational in space. The complexity of the energy transition requires a holistic, multidisciplinary and integrated approach to design, capable of addressing energy transition processes at the neighbourhood scale. By adopting a method that interprets the landscape as a complex techno-natural infrastructure, the Al Safarat neighbourhood in Riyadh will be considered a possible experimental laboratory for the energy transition of the districts of the Gulf cities.

The climate crisis exposes the inadequacy of modern urban paradigms grounded in the separation between nature and built form. In response, this paper reframes streetscapes as architectural and urban spaces where ecological performance and spatial composition are conceived as mutually constitutive. Rather than treating Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) as isolated techno-performative devices, the research interprets them as design components capable of shaping section, threshold, and relational depth within the street. Building on two European-funded research projects, the ClimaScapes research—which unfolds into the Climate-Adaptive Nature-Based Urban Regeneration (CANBUR) Framework—through the different phases of Research about Design, Research by Design and Research for Design, thus develops the design-driven Operational Methodology. The paper, repositioning streetscapes as strategic fields for urban and architectural design, presents (i) the tools developed within it and (ii) its application inside a neighborhood of Matera (Italy). The findings demonstrate that integrating NBS within coherent spatial configurations enables a shift from environmental optimization toward architectural composition, offering a transferable yet context-sensitive methodology for climate-adaptive regeneration in Euro-Mediterranean and comparable urban contexts. This approach suggests streetscapes evolve into resilient, climate-adaptive urban commons, reinforcing community ties, ecological sustainability, and the broader goal of future-proof cities.