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The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: To what extent is residents’ perception of the state of their environment consistent with findings based on samples from the field? Are the locals aware of the drivers and pressures that led to the present state of the environment? Are they aware of the impacts? If so, are they able to recommend responses?

To examine the extent to depend on citizens’ opinion in decision-making, the researcher juxtaposed results from data gathered and analysed from the field assessing the quality of the marine environment, coastal zone and levels of both noise and air pollution. The researcher collected datum from focus group meetings, questionnaire and review of newspapers and magazines. The researcher used Qualitative Data Analysis QDA software to analyse qualitative data.

The results of the survey and the focus group meetings indicated that the citizens’ perceptions are, to some extent, in line with the results that the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) team concluded from the field survey. Citizens do not feel the urgency of conserving water because the government has been meeting growing demand by increasing the supply of water. The participants identified drivers and pressures that led to the present state of the environment. They were not able to differentiate between the state of the environment and the impacts of environmental degradation.

Citizens’ opinion is a valuable tool as an input at the various stages of plan formulation. Citizens’ views can bring an issue to experts’ attention and shed light on the qualitative aspect, such as meaning or value, that the quantitative data fail to reveal. However, the planning process must not depend entirely on citizen’s views. Experts must combine citizens’ opinions with scientific facts that result from in situ monitoring and laboratory analysis.

Manama, the capital city of the Kingdom of Bahrain, is a major port in the Arabian Gulf, a financial hub. Following the discovery of oil, Bahrain attracted skilled and unskilled expats. The Government initiated plans for urban development. Urban growth was at the expense of agricultural and desert lands in addition to reclaiming land from water bodies. Affluent Bahrainis moved to newer settlements. Low-income Bahrainis continued to live in the old quarters. Single male workers, mostly Asians, moved into dilapidated buildings in the old quarters of the city. The paper employs a mixed research approach. It uses Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems to account for urban transformations; and as well as document review, interviews, and a questionnaire to understand the process underlying these transformations and their outcomes. The results show how globalisation and neoliberalism led Manama to emerge as a global city. Cultural identity and geographic location within the Bahraini metropolitan area suggest these relationships are dynamic. Planners perceived Bahraini cities as a morphological phenomenon. They did not comprehend the complexity of the socio-cultural particularities of Bahraini cities. Revitalising the old quarters of Manama can serve as a national mega project, thus conserving its cultural identity.

From scholars' view, there are various research approaches to investigate the city and its spaces. However, there is a need to examine the city and its spaces from the residents' perspective. Hermeneutic phenomenology might be applicable and valuable. Also, communication is a requirement for successful participatory planning and spatial analysis. Architects, urban designers and landscape architects must possess intersubjective competencies to communicate and engage with the public. Hermeneutic knowledge is the source for developing these intersubjective capabilities essential for communication. All design preparation and execution steps require distorted-free communication, starting with defining a problem and ending with implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

The paper aims to test the applicability of hermeneutic phenomenology in urban studies. The author examines the right to the city and producing space in Cairo, Egypt. Besides web pages, documents and social networks, data sources vary, including proverbs and poems. Semiotics is the qualitative research technique used to interrogate the collected material using qualitative data analysis software.

Cairo's growth is the outcome of the division of labor, administration and power dynamics. Egyptians' right to take part in Cairo's planning and management is the issue. Hermeneutic phenomenology is an approach to perform spatial environmental investigations. It could inform decision-making, ensure the planning process's validity and guarantee people's ownership of planned projects.

Phenomenology allows for inside and outside the understanding of a spatial phenomenon. The current focus of architectural and planning schools' curricula is on technical actions. These schools consider increasing the dose of social sciences in their curricula. Educators could teach students how to use hermeneutic phenomenological research methodologies. Using hermeneutic knowledge in communication encourages public engagement in formulating and implementing projects, thus ensuring their long-term viability.

This paper examines the attempt to develop smart, sustainable cities (SSC) in the Arab region. The paper identifies four barriers: 1) infrastructural need for technological advances and availing information and transparency regarding the functioning of the administration; 2) high rates of adult illiteracy and lack of political participation; 3) methods of data collection, validity, reliability, and analysis, which are of utmost importance for decision-making are not always precise and rigorous; and 4) bound rationality that affects the planning process, thus hampering proper planning. Attempting to develop an SSC is not possible in a country where the majority are illiterate and poor. These attempts could lead to the loss of public space, social segregation, and dysfunctional democracy.

Sustainable design is a new paradigm to localize sustainable development. The Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA) prepared guidelines for architectural projects to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using the theory of change, the Department of Architecture at Menofia University set the 2023 graduation project to explore the possibility of adopting sustainable design principles and integrating SDGs into architectural education. The paper documents and evaluates the experiment to drive best practices and lessons learned.

The paper utilized a mixed design strategy utilizing qualitative and quantitative techniques. It gathered data from various sources, including a student questionnaire and unstructured interviews with external examiners. Data analysis included frequency distribution and sentiment, content and thematic analyses. Triangulation is applied, combining data, investigator and methodological triangulation to enhance the paper’s validity.

Integrating SDGs into the 2023 graduation project contributed to students’ understanding of sustainable urban development. Students demonstrated varying receptiveness to guidelines, focusing mainly on the SDGs (1-5, 7, 8, 10 and 11). Gender equality and economic empowerment struck a chord with the mostly female students, acknowledging that securing well-paying jobs is a way to escape the cycle of poverty. Challenges included limited resources and time constraints, a scarcity of Arabic reading materials and misunderstandings among students and staff, thus prompting collaborative efforts beyond standard studio hours. Despite challenges, the initiative contributes to sustainable urban development, providing valuable lessons learned and insights.

Integrating sustainable design principles into architectural education is doable but involves a complex process requiring careful preparation. The value lies in the tangible impact on sustainable urban development, emphasizing the importance of incorporating sustainable development concepts throughout the architectural curriculum. The authors advocate for increased awareness and education among stakeholders and suggest areas for future research by exploring a broader implementation and assessing the long-term effects on students’ mindsets and practices. Sustainable development is a means toward community prosperity, and the inquiry highlights the collective responsibility of scholars, practitioners and students in shaping a better future.

Sustainable development is an attempt to achieve three competing aims: economic development, social justice and environmental conservation. Localising sustainable development in the Arabian city might require a framework that originates from its reality manifested in the region’s history, culture and religion. Ibn Khaldun’s model seems suitable for planning a sustainable city in the Arab world. The purpose of this paper is to discuss suitability of Ibn Khaldun’s writing to localising sustainable development in the Arabian cities.

The paper used a qualitative research methodology. The researcher investigated the writings of Ibn Khaldun and other scholars who studied his work to derive lessons for planning the sustainable Arab city.

Many of Ibn Khaldun’s concepts lost their accuracy, meanings and intentions in the course of translating his work. Ibn Khaldun’s writings can be the source from which scholars, planners and city administrators derive lessons to assure the sustainable development of human settlements, particularly in the Arab region. The writings of Ibn Khaldun are relevant to the Arab countries. His writings are sensitive to the realities of the Arab world, including geography, environment, history, religion and culture. His writings can support efforts for localising sustinable development in the Arabian cities.

Interrogating Ibn Khaldun’s writings can enable scholars, planners, architects and city administrators to elaborate and implement plans for the sustainable Arabian city. The findings of the paper assure that Ibn Khaldun’s analysis is suitable for addressing the urban ills of the contemporary Arabian metropolis as they were in his time.

The article attempts to shed light on the social aspects of research that deal with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sustainable cities. The aim is to offer a global view of these facets' evolution and to provide information on people-centered smart cities.

The research is qualitative. A systematic bibliometric approach is a framework for the research. The unit of analysis is publications on SDGs and Smart Cities (SCs) indexed in Scopus. The authors used VOSviewer text mining functionality to construct co-occurrence networks of socially related critical terms extracted from textual data. The co-occurrence of keywords presents a valuable method and process for attaining in-depth analysis and fast comprehension of trends and linkages in articles from a holistic approach.

Social media, social sustainability and social capital are the three multifaceted social keywords that co-occur in SDGs and SCs. The paper provides a brief compendium of resources and frameworks to build a socially sustainable smart city.

The retrieval date was on 15 August 2019. The authors used the same search query for new papers released in 2019 and afterwards to update their findings. The authors collected 657 documents on SCs, compared to 2,975 documents about SDGs demonstrating that their findings are still trending in the same direction, emphasizing the importance of the research topic. SCs' social aspects are still chartered areas that require the attention to future research.

The authors’ decision to use two separate data sets for SCs and SDGs data files helps to provide a more comprehensive picture of the research landscape. It may identify areas where research is lacking or needs future research. The authors present an integrative agenda for a smart city to be socially sustainable. Innovative approaches to urban planning are required to empower the place and context and improve the users' satisfaction, where innovative solutions enable smart, sustainable and inclusive societies. Infrastructure governance is a critical keystone. It could guarantee that public investments contribute to sustainable urban development while enhancing city resilience, particularly in facing climate change and inclusive growth challenges.

Sustainable development requires a mental shift that induces behavioral modification. Education is central to sustainable development as it alters an individual's worldview. Egypt is a signatory to Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many Egyptian educational institutions have adopted the universal trend of incorporating sustainability and SDGs into their curricula. A recent UN assessment reports that Egypt faces challenges in meeting most SDGs. Therefore, this article investigates how students' knowledge, attitude and practices reflect their awareness regarding sustainability? Has their education induced any behavioral changes? What is the instructors' role in mainstreaming sustainability?

The article investigates the progression of environmental consciousness among Egyptian architectural students and its relationship to sustainability. There are two sources of data: (1) documents, including study plans and course descriptions, and (2) a questionnaire developed and distributed electronically among students from public, private and international schools. The authors used a variety of data analysis methods. They used SPSS for statistical analysis to determine similarities among the students and correlations between variables. They then used Atlas.ti to analyze curricula, study plans and student replies to open-ended questions.

The interrogated curricula equate sustainability with the environment, as some consider energy conservation equivalent to environmental conservation and protection. Others emphasized environmental control issues as measures of green architecture. The results suggest that students' knowledge and awareness are not conducive to practices expected to yield sustainable designs. The impact of architectural and planning education on altering their attitudes is minimal. Public schools treat students as passive objects, whereas international and some private schools attempt to adhere to the globally accepted architectural pedagogy ideals, transforming the student's mindset.

Education in architecture is crucial to achieving sustainable development because it prepares future professionals who can contribute to sustainability through their practice. The findings show that architectural and planning education has a negligible effect on students' knowledge and attitudes, which influence their practices. Reforming architectural and planning education is a requirement to accomplish the SDGs. The reform requires instructors to introduce students to the theory of knowledge and critical thinking, thus enabling graduates to be competitive in global labor markets. Reforming education will direct the research agenda of staff members and graduate students toward contemporary research problems.

The research method that mixes qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry is the first aspect of the originality of the research. Linking teaching methods in the studio with instructors' understanding of sustainability can explain why sustainable development is not clear in architectural and planning education in Egypt, which influences both professional practice and scientific research. Finally, the paper highlights the role of universities to be sustainable in embedding the concept and changing students' mindsets, thus improving Egypt's stand on the SDGs index.

Social, spatial and environmental justice are inseparable, and key for sustainable urban development. The city is the cradle of innovation and production. Also, the city is the site of riots, where protesters demand their right to access services and resources. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question: Why do plans to resolve urban ills in developing countries fail to deliver and achieve social justice?

This paper investigates weaknesses, limitations and outcomes of planning processes in a developing country. The author used two qualitative research tools: document analysis augmented with informal interviews. The author uses Egypt as a case study in an attempt to answer this question. The author reviewed two types of documents: official reports that the Egyptian authorities produced and donor agencies prepared plus both published and unpublished research. Interviewees are those who participated in elaborating and executing urban plans and policies.

Achieving social, spatial and environmental justice is amongst the reasons for planning metropolitan areas and their regions. Unfortunately, rarely plans accomplish social, spatial or environmental justice. Institutional setup is the reason for failed urban planning – institutional failures lead to both policy and market failures, thus complicating urban problems.

Approved plans must have the power of legislation, and planners need to reclaim their authority and autonomy, which requires regulating the profession. Planning education must be at the graduate level and available to other disciplines, such as economics, public administration, law and the like. Planners must acquire the following competencies: technical competencies for analytical actions; hermeneutic competencies for communicative actions; and critical competencies to observe professional ethics. They must emancipate themselves from their bias to enlighten and empower their constituents.

This paper focuses on the competencies and skills needed in preparing graduates of urban planning schools to meet the real-world challenges of professional practices. The present work explores the gap between skills and knowledge required to excel in the urban planning discipline and professional practices.

This research utilises a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. This study depends on collecting data from descriptive and statistical analysis based on two streams. The first comes from a survey launched among students of urban planning. The second is interviews scheduled with academics that are also practitioners.

The results outline the missing correlation between what Egyptian students learn in schools of urban planning and professional practices. The findings show that academics, students, and graduates share the same experiences about the education system. Academics agreed that graduates need to be more skilful rather than knowledgeable. The discussion shows that the undefined role of the planner in Egypt influenced the mismatching between the current demand and supply of competencies and skills offered by planning schools. The concluded remarks mentioned that communication skills and negotiation skills are the most crucial skills for graduates, in addition to information finding and data-processing skills.

This research has particular advantages in presenting a model of competencies as results of scanning the expectations of Egyptian students and new graduates vs professional practices. The contribution is in answering the question of what skills students of the urban planning programs should learn in order to meet the continued changes in professional practices.