“Humanising cities” is a significant topic in recent urban discussions, driven by diverse applications among urban managers and decision-makers. The Saudi Arabia initiative, through a quality-of-life programme, exemplifies efforts to integrate humanising aspects into urban projects. This study develops a structured multidimensional framework linking humanising aspects with quality-of-life indicators. Its significance is verified through the literature and a descriptive survey method in Jeddah’s neighbourhoods, considering residents’ preferences. This framework incorporates physical, social, environmental, and mobility indicators in the design of open spaces, prioritised based on user preferences. The framework offers significant potential to revitalise vacant neighbourhoods resulting from recent demolitions in Jeddah, restore the humanising aspects, improve the quality of life, and mitigate traffic congestion in northern areas through the “environmental” and “physical” indicators that share the highest priority based on the core findings of this research. Moreover, demographic factors, particularly age and education, significantly influence users’ preferences in humanising urban spaces.

This chapter presents the theory of space syntax and its contributions to urban design. The theory, introduced in 1984 by Hillier and Hanson, refers to a set of principles and techniques to investigate and reveal the characteristics of urban settlements via concrete measures. In this regard, the current chapter is divided into several sections. The first section demonstrates the space syntax theory at both conceptual and methodological levels. In the second section, the measures of connectivity, integration, choice, and intelligibility are discussed, and linked to the traditional urban values such as accessibility and legibility the traditional urban values. In the third section, types of space syntax analysis are discussed, in addition to their importance and their application potentials. This chapter demonstrates the contributions of space syntax theory to urban design and architecture. This finding provides a potential mechanism for explaining how the theory succeeded in presenting numerical and concrete measures to reveal what have been intangible values of urban settlements such as legibility and accessibility.

Cities today face significant environmental challenges, including climate change, drought, flooding, and heat waves. These issues demand new approaches to help cities endure and adapt, leading to the emergence of resilience—the ability of a city to withstand and adjust to future threats. While resilience has multiple definitions, its core objective remains ensuring cities meet their inhabitants' physical, social, and economic needs with minimal disruption. Understanding a city's capabilities is crucial to assessing its resilience, and this paper focuses on districts as manageable units that reflect urban resilience. This study examines the resilience of districts' spatial structures, a critical component of urban resilience. Based on broad references, key qualities of resilient spatial structures include internal and external connectivity, mobility, accessibility, and legibility. Evaluating these aspects provides insight into spatial resilience. The study assesses several districts in Jeddah, including demolished ones, using a quantitative analysis based on space syntax theory and techniques. Findings indicate that many districts exhibited poor spatial structure resilience, contributing to their demolition. Additionally, the study identified areas within resilient districts, such as Al-Rehab, where specific vulnerabilities diminished overall resilience, leading to their eventual demolition. These results validate the proposed methodology in identifying vulnerable districts at the city scale and pinpointing weak areas within resilient districts. The findings offer crucial insights for necessary interventions to enhance the resilience of Jeddah's districts, informing future urban planning and development strategies.

One of the challenges confronting urban conservation is the inclusion of heritage areas in the development process. While often seen as constraints, heritage areas represent promising opportunities to enhance city character and quality. Nevertheless, the inclusion of heritage areas in the development process is intricate, requiring an extensive analysis of the urban form of heritage areas to facilitate the inclusion process. From this stance, this paper proposes a comprehensive analytical framework for identifying the features and characteristics of heritage areas, using Assiut City in Egypt as a case study. The proposed framework addresses four interrelated dimensions of urban design: the morphological, the functional, the perceptual, and the social. Space syntax methodology, mainly axial mapping, is employed to analyze the urban pattern of Assiut’s Historic Core to disclose its spatial configuration and morphological features. The author will use Survey and field observation to address the heritage area’s functional, perceptual, and social features (33 respondents and five interviewees). Thus, this paper utilizes a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques to provide a holistic understanding of the urban heritage area. Implications of the study are discussed in terms of the importance of including heritage areas in the development process and how the proposed analytical framework can contribute to revealing the features of urban areas in general and heritage areas in particular. Thus, policymakers and urban planners can map out the areas of improvement and development fostering inclusive, well-integrated urban regeneration and urban development of our cities.