New revitalization and regeneration strategies are currently taking place as a scheme for reassessing urban spaces. This paper, as a result, navigates the theory of Urban Acupuncture (UA) as a quick and effective tool that can be adopted in large cities. Using Riyadh city as a case study, it discusses how this tool can be used to achieve maximum results with minimal effort in the most critical places. Riyadh city is the capital of Saudi Arabia and is considered one of the fastest-growing metropolitan cities in the Arab world. Through time, it has transformed into a city with leftover open spaces and an ever-increasing population. The study commences by exploring the term UA and its principles and similarly presents some of its successful international examples. It thereafter delves into the past and current situation in the city to show some of the challenges it faces. The study aims to develop a filtering framework for selecting a suitable sensitive spot that can be used to apply the concept of UA. A conclusion is made that as a small-scale space approach and a progressive concentrated urban renewal strategy.

Cairo is considered one of the main growing cities in the Arab world today. Conventional planning has failed to direct this growth towards creating sustainable urban environments for all, and has instead encouraged lopsided development that caters only to the affluent sections. This trend has affected public urban spaces as well, which are now centered on consumption and dependant on heavy investment in real estate and technology. This has a considerable impact on the spectrum of socio-economic groups that are able to access and use them. Taking as a starting point the principles and concept of Green Urbanism, the paper questions the prevalent situation, and focuses on three aspects that have been ignored in recent approaches in recent development plans. The first (Green Urbanism) is explored as a main principles to revitalize the second (Public Spaces), in order to achieve the third (Sustainable Model) as a long term goal. This is done using analysis and design in parallel, and results in a proposal for a new design process and through it, scale specific design solutions for Cairo public spaces that will create a high quality of life for the people of the heavily populated, demographically diverse and socio-economically fragmented city

Resilience is defined as the ability to predict, prepare for, and adapt to every condition change and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from any disruptions. One of these upcoming changing conditions is sea-level rise in coastal cities with its severe impacts regarding coastal erosion. This dramatic environmental issue necessitates adaptation strategies for waterfront areas to be prepared for the future. Such strategies will help stakeholders to identify vulnerabilities, assess environmental and health risks of disasters. and track progress in improving recovery capacity. The research will focus on the northern wetland of Egypt. as it constitutes about one quarter of the wetland of the Mediterranean region. Port Said governorate will be the case study, as Port Said hosts Egypt’s second largest harbor. Port Said Governorate is the most physically and socio-economically vulnerable area in the region and will be seriously threatened by sea-level rise as most of its land is low-lying. Several models predict an accelerated sea-level rise after 2040 to 2050 in response to increased melting of the West Antarctic ice shelf. The most expected serious impacts of this sea-level rise is the threat to recreational beach communities as well as to other activities in the coastal zone. This article presents four strategies for sea-level rise adaptation: protection, accommodation, retreat, and attack. A comparative analysis will be constructed for these strategies with respect to the governorate coastal zones to state the most efficient for each zone’s conditions/constraints. Coastal development phasing will be introduced, addressing design guidelines to achieve these resilient strategies for urban development in Port Said city.

With growing urbanization and significant expansion of cities, public health has risen as a primary focus of sustainable development. Our built environment can be one of the main causes of diseases; however, with the right design guidelines, the city can easily promote physical activity and physiological wellbeing. Recent research states that connecting waterfronts with the urban structure of the city contributes to revitalizing waterfront efficiency and supports physical activities along the waterfront. Accordingly, this reflects the importance of providing smooth and easy access to the waterfront, linking it to the city structure. Moreover, this action has large benefits on the socio-economic level of the city via providing a motivational anchor for developers to renovate the city’s vacant properties. In addition, many social opportunities can be achieved as a result of these development actions. Recently, Jeddah city had a huge ongoing urban development and a renovated waterfront connecting the whole shoreline to the adjacent urban areas. Accordingly, does the “connectivity” to Jeddah’s waterfront support and promote physical activities? Regarding this question, the research will investigate the ability of the urban areas attached to Jeddah’s waterfront to act as a link between the city and the waterfront. The results of this study revealed that traditions and culture have an obvious effect on the poor connectivity through the spread of private properties along most of the urban areas adjacent to Jeddah’s waterfront. Besides, the urban structure of these areas creates an obstruction for supporting the link with the waterfront. Thus, any development plans that support physical activities on Jeddah’s waterfront should take into consideration, at the same time, improving the connectivity of adjacent urban areas.

Lately, a lot of studies focus on people behaviour and their relation with the built environment. This relation is studied in environment psychology science, which contains different theories as place theory. Place theory inquiries people presence or absence, and some attributes in such space to define how it raise to be a place for people. Hence, people are usually pedestrian in different times and situations. Moreover, the benefits of designing for pedestrian, and the calls of various urban theories to design for pedestrian and, so designing places is a critical and important issue. Accordingly, Space Syntax will be applied in this research as an efficient tool to be used for developing urban fabric of cities, and to design urban places for pedestrian.