Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), formalized by Calthorpe and Poticha in 1993, emerged to counter urban sprawl, reduce car dependency, and revitalize historical community centers. Rooted in “new urbanism”, TOD emphasizes integrated regional land-use planning and high-capacity public transportation. In the Middle East, TOD implementation remains understudied, particularly regarding heritage integration and social equity in arid climates. Doha’s rapid social and economic transformation presents both opportunities and risks: growth offers urban revitalization yet threatens to displace communities and dilute cultural identity. Shifts in urban planning have aimed to address sustainability, connectivity, and heritage preservation. This study examines Msheireb Downtown Doha (MDD) to assess how TOD can restore historic districts while managing gentrification, enhancing accessibility and promoting inclusiveness. A mixed-methods approach was applied, including 12 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (Qatar Rail, Msheireb Properties, Ministry of Municipality and Environment), purposive surveys of 80 urban users, site observations, and spatial mapping. Using the Node-Place-People (NPP) model, the study evaluates TOD effectiveness across transportation connectivity (node), built environment quality (place), and equity metrics (people). The findings show that MDD successfully implements fundamental TOD principles through its design, which enhances connectivity, walkability, social inclusiveness, and heritage preservation. However, multiple obstacles remain: the “peripheral island effect” limits benefits to the core, pedestrian–vehicular balance is unresolved, and commercial gentrification is on the rise. This research provides evidence-based knowledge for GCC cities pursuing sustainable urban regeneration by demonstrating both the advantages of TOD and the necessity for critical, context-sensitive implementation that focuses on social equity together with physical transformation.

Qatar has the unfortunate reputation of the country with the highest per-capita carbon emissions in the world, 15% of which is due to space cooling demand. We investigate the extent to which this demand is driven by ‘overcooling’ in non-domestic buildings, that is low indoor set-points resulting in wasted energy and cold thermal discomfort. Using a recently developed overcooling metric, ISO 7730 compliant sensors and occupant survey data comprising 2,472 responses from eight morphologically diverse office buildings, we find that 32% of occupants can be classed as uncomfortably cold. Our analysis implicates the application of the ‘international’ ASHRAE 55 thermal comfort standard in the observed overcooling. Using computer models of the studied buildings, we find that this overcooling is responsible for 27% of their cooling energy demand, translating to 4% of national cooling energy demand and 2% of carbon for all non-domestic buildings. Thus, a simple upward adjustment of set-point temperatures by ∼ 2°C in non-domestic buildings would greatly improve comfort and reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions without changing the building or its systems. This suggests an urgent need for a new localised thermal comfort standard, with wider regional applicability due to similar culture and climates. Practical application: Eliminating building overcooling yields in a notable reduction of 8.5% of cooling energy demand for every 1°C increase in the indoor setpoint temperature. This reduction results in an average of 32.3 kW·h/m ² /yr in a typical office building in Qatar. A comfort temperature of 24.9°C is suggested which is on average of 1.5°C warmer than the currently applied indoor temperature setpoint, resulting in substantial cooling reductions and increased thermal comfort. In practice, raising the indoor setpoint temperature by 2°C could prevent building overcooling, improve indoor thermal comfort and reduce cooling energy demand across in warm climates.

Thermal comfort is influenced by climate, expectations and adaptation opportunities. Hence the emergence of adaptive thermal comfort standards. Unfortunately, international adaptive standards and much of the underlying literature, are based on data collected from middle-income individuals in office or apartment blocks, raising the question of their validity in other contexts. This paper is the first large-scale investigation of the applicability of these standards to populations living in refugee/displacement camps, to establish whether comfort theory needs to be modified for such populations. This was achieved through highly difficult, data collection in camps in Jordan, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Peru. The data collected consists of 1982 rows of personal variables and concurrent environmental measurements. From these, the thermal comfort boundaries of the displaced were found to be wider (13K) than suggested in prevalent standards (8K). A new mathematical model of thermal comfort for such groups is hence developed. The results expand our understanding of comfort theory to include an understudied population and will be useful for those responsible for shelter for the currently 120M displaced, as they now allow rational design standards to be set. A tool based on the new model is currently being applied by aid agencies in camps in Afghanistan. Practical Application: The design of refugee accommodation across aid agencies requires the setting of design standards, as these impact material choice, construction techniques and cost, and hence the number of people that can be housed in any disaster. Highly constraining standards can thus reduce the population that can be housed, with associated implications for mortality rates. The alternative being the failure to set any quantitative target, creating a danger to life. The new thermal comfort model presented here allows for the first time the setting of targeted comfort design standards in camps.

Neoliberal privatization models, emphasizing economic advancement over universal fairness, present considerable challenges to the urban regeneration process in post-conflict environments. The Solidere project in Beirut shows how architectural development in the Central District establishes social obstacles through its transformation of 1.8 million m² of war-destroyed territory. This research applies UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) framework to distinguish regeneration from gentrification systematically and to assess the impact of privatized governance. By employing rigorous case study methodologies to assess master plans, legal statutes, corporate reports, and academic publications, four evaluation criteria for the HUL: historical layering, social participation, spatial connectivity, and physical integrity, were developed. The results show that while Solidere’s physical reconstruction was successful; it did not incorporate HUL principles fully. This resulted in the forced relocation of between 40,000 and 60,000 individuals, the commercialization of heritage through façadism, with 24% of the original buildings being preserved and 76% being destroyed. Sarajevo serves as a point of comparison, revealing the vulnerabilities of profit-driven approaches. The study shows that market-driven reconstruction efforts lacking public engagement will foster exclusionary gentrification, resulting in the erosion of urban identity and ownership, challenging neoliberal urban theories.