Contemporary cities continue to face significant geoenvironmental challenges due to constant rapid urbanization. Furthermore, the governments of cities worldwide are considering the green cities approach to convert their cities’ weaknesses into opportunities. The 2030 Saudi vision supports smart growth concepts, with a vision of speeding up economic growth while ensuring that natural assets strengthen the country’s foundations. The urban heat island (UHI) effect is a threatening phenomenon that increases the required cooling loads and negatively affects urban communities and the quality of life, especially in arid environments. This study integrates remote sensing and spatial network analysis to investigate the UHI using the distribution of land surface temperatures (LST) extracted from satellite data during both winter and summer seasons in Makkah city. We investigated and compared the UHIs in two districts, Al-Sharashef and AlEskan, representing the organic and deformed iron-grid with fragmented paralleled street networks, respectively. The spatial analysis of different LST maps, which were derived from Landsat-8 images revealed significant differences between the two case studies. The mean temperature for the AlEskan district was 1–1.5 °C higher than that of the Al-Sharshaf district. This difference can be attributed to the different urban fabrics between the two districts. Moreover, the zones that are currently under construction show relatively higher LST compared to residential zones. The research revealed that the organic/compact urban fabric is better than the deformed iron-grid urban fabric in mitigating the UHI. However, these results are specific to the test site; however, they emphasize the role of integration of remote sensing and spatial network analysis in urban planning. In light of these findings, we recommend integrating remote sensing-based LST analysis with spatial analysis of urban fabrics to better understand the causal effects of UHI, especially in cities located in desert environments. This can help mitigate the impact of projected global warming and contribute to improving the quality of urban life.

Historic buildings still perform their role today by being utilized either for their original purpose or a new purpose for which they are adapted. These buildings have specific requirements that inhabitants must follow. These requirements and relating uses and maintenance procedures result from adaptive reuse decisions, which may not be the most optimal scenario. The imperative is that historic buildings are used in a manner that, on the one hand, does not endanger their value related to heritage and tradition, and on the other hand, guarantees a degree of utility for their inhabitants, such as acceptable performance with regards to either air cooling or heating. The challenge is how to optimize the use of energy for either air cooling or heating, provided that adaptive reuse decisions are grounded in certain very specific and very rigid principles. The latter render is extremely difficult to meet the twin challenges of ensuring energy efficiency and thermal comfort for inhabitants while at the same time complying with the adaptive reuse principles. To address this challenge and gain an insight into ways of navigating it, a Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is conducted in Former Soldier’s Residence in the Cairo Citadel, Cairo, Egypt, which is now used as the National Organization for Urban Harmony’s (NOUH) administrative head office, this research can be considered as a single domain from which many other possible multi-domains can be investigated while studying the case of adaptive reuse. Other aspects such as indoor environmental quality, air quality, acoustics and lighting might act as multiple approaches appear to be widely used according to this review study, and in the future, the authors intend to test this research with the current single approach used in this research, which is the thermal comfort. POE includes both objective and subjective assessment, the POE limitation at this research to those assessment while a multi-perceptional and behavioral factors might be used as physical, contextual, personal, and others. The simulation and the survey methods were employed consecutively to assess the case study. By considering the research results, it was determined that the building consumes unnecessary energy by its current use of air conditioning system.

Building performance and occupants’ comfort lie at the core of building design targets. Principles of green architecture and building physics are not given enough thought and consideration. In the best cases, some thought is given to such factors but without a scientific methodology, which takes into consideration appropriate climatic data and appropriate assessment tools. Most importantly, the interference of the environmentalist in architecture projects comes usually very late in the design processes. Facing these facts has driven most countries to adopt official strategies and policies to deal with building’s performance. The rating systems are among these initiatives. The author of this chapter adapts a detailed methodology to aid the integration of the principles of the green architecture in the early stages of design using rating systems. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 1 that was developed in the USA by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for Core and Shell has been employed as the main design target. This chapter presents a brief about the world green initiatives and discusses the results of applying the methodology of integrating the green architectural principles at the early stages of design processes—through precedent analysis.

Today, many neighbourhoods around the world are suffering from several problems. These problems affected the culture, social interaction, economic aspects as well as environmental impacts. Accordingly, urban development should address social and cultural aspects of each particular community within the environmental and economical context. The current research aims at developing a set of design guidelines that promotes the concept of socially sustainable neighbourhoods in Saudi Arabia. Several rating systems and urban design codes around the world set guidelines for urban design development and particularly in neighbourhood design. LEED (Leadership of Environment and Energy design) for neighbourhood design, and QSAS (Qatar Sustainability Assessment System); are examples of these rating system. Nonetheless, these rating systems are not applicable in the context of Saudi Arabia without considering its local social and cultural aspects. Therefore, this research resulted as a reaction to the abbreviation of socio-cultural aspects in neighbourhood design approaches. This research depends on an analytical review of different neighbourhood design approaches and case studies. In addition, subjective data is collected from experts and professionals about their points of view and their recommendations regarding neighbourhood design for Jeddah city. The result of the research is a set of design guidelines that consists of design principles adjusted to fit the context of Saudi Arabia (Jeddah City). The formulated guidelines are adapted and tested in an evaluation application of two residential neighbourhoods in Jeddah city. This application validated the proposed design guidelines. Considering the proposed design guidelines; in the design process of Jeddah’s neighbourhoods, this will promote a leading approach to the concept of socially sustainable neighbourhoods in the kingdom.

Vernacular measures, such as courtyard, wind catcher “Malqaf”, wooden lattice “Mashrabia”, and lantern—which can help buildings to depend on natural energy from the sun and the wind—have started to be abandoned in the last decades. However, wind pressure and stack effects are becoming more popular in modern buildings design and the primary method in most domestic buildings to achieve the desired cross ventilation and minimize the air temperature to reach the required cooling loads. This paper aims to revive one of the vernacular measures “the windcatcher”, quantifying the effectiveness of the inward/outward opening properties on the air temperature and airflow inside the buildings. Analytical literature review, context analysis, and numerical simulations are performed. The computer fluid dynamics (CFD) is utilized to simulate both the temperature distribution and the flow field within the windcatcher model. Simulations are carried out in the fluent environment, which uses the control volume method for solving the conservation law. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) and energy equation with the realizable k-ϵ turbulent model are employed. The research uses a parametric analysis to test different scenarios of windcatcher designs in terms of dimensions, proportions, and opening ratios. The results of this study confirm that windcatcher has a significant effect in lowering the air temperature inside the different floors. However, it is recommended to use a wind-catcher for not more than two floors, increase the area of the outward opening to 200% relative to the inward opening and apply side opening in the upper floors.