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This study aims to identify key indicators affecting the residents' perception of overall quality of urban life in the Walled City of Famagusta, the historic core of the city, which reflects a decaying socio-spatial quality. The paper first presents a brief overview of the research methodology and then analyses the results from a household survey carried out in the Walled City, in order to provide a sheer understanding of people's feelings about their neighbourhood environment and the overall urban quality of life in case of implementation of a possible regeneration scheme for the area. The research contributes some empirical evidence to verify the claimed benefits and shortcomings in terms of effects of neighbourhood satisfaction, sense of community, sense of belonging, neighbourhood attributes, use/evaluation of cultural and recreational opportunities and safety on the overall quality of urban life of the residents, as well as to identify the predictors of the neighbourhood satisfaction.

The significance of ecological citizenship for the sustainable urbanism discourse has been highly recognised in recent years. Targeting to adopt ecological citizenship as a lifestyle among urban residents appears potentially significant and urgent for the city of Famagusta, North Cyprus. As a result of unsustainable urban development, Famagusta dictates a new way of living to its inhabitants that is not familiar to them in terms of local sociocultural characteristics and environmental values. Therefore, a user survey was carried out among local people, within a random sample of 165 residents, in order to obtain scientific data that may be used for the needed planning policies. Within the survey, environmental attitudes of the residents were measured with the help of Dunlop and Van Liere’s New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale. The aim was to understand the level of their existing environmental worldview, one of the basic aspects of ecological citizenship. The results of the survey reveal that Famagusta residents’ existing environmental attitudes cannot achieve an adequate level in order to be one of the dynamics shaping their lifestyles. However, residents have slightly more than a medium level of environmental worldview.

In the last few decades, the increasing urban population and heterogeneous quality, the expansion of urban areas, the intensification of developments within existing cities, the continued proliferation of the high rise and other intensive building types, the deterioration of both natural and cultural resources, and the results of the recent struggles for international capital as secure and favorite places has been threatening the image and identity of cities more than ever. In this context, the concepts of transformation and identity, which in turn reflect on urban sustainability, need to be rein-tegrated into the agenda of planners and designers. As cities are always changing and evolving in response to social, economic and political forces, the urban environment has to be considered in a time-based perspective identifying the changes in the local context. In line with these, this paper searches for urban identity in the case of samsun, a symbolic city which has played an important role on the development of modern Turkey, where transformations are dramatic. As the general understanding and the majority of the literature have been restricted to the perspective of form and other physical issues, and neglected to consider the social dimension of environment, which in turn brings about standardized ‘urban design guide' or ‘make-up' type solutions, this will enable the paper to have a holistic framework dealing with all aspects of transformation and provide the reader with a broad-based and innovative perspective towards the vision of cities with place identity.

With increasing urbanisation in developing countries and the concomitant overcrowding on streets, serious questions remain about the liveability of inner-city residential-commercial streets. This paper contends that lively streets are not necessarily liveable streets. Liveability is defined by other criteria that take cognizance of human comfort and capabilities within living environments. Observations suggest an uneasy relationship between a crowded public space and the private residential spaces that sit next to them. The paper’s focus is to measure the liveability of a lively but overcrowded street and how its everyday use affects the physical characteristics of buildings, the activities, and the wellbeing of residents. Employing a mixed-method strategy, the study draws on observations, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire survey of residents, shopkeepers, and street traders. The findings suggest that an overcrowded street space has a negative effect on the liveability and quality of living of residents and other users but that this is tempered by intra-dependency amongst the users and the negotiation of the rights accruing to all as individuals and as groups.

This paper aims to determine the challenges and prospects for affordable housing within the context of sustainability by investigating the socio-economic and environmental impacts of housing developments based on the analysis of four so-called affordable housing schemes in Yola, Nigeria. Using questionnaire survey and indicators developed from literature reviews on affordable and sustainable housing, the findings suggest that due to inadequate availability of housing inputs (land, finance, infrastructure, labor and materials), lack of diversity, improper location, inefficient transport facilities and lack of user participation, the examined developments are neither sustainable nor affordable. The research hence contributes some empirical evidence to overcome the defined shortcomings and provides a basis for governments' housing commitments towards reforming and devising policies for community involvement in housing provision, providing easy access to land with legal title deeds, easy access to housing finance, infrastructure, etc.

THE PRINCIPLES OF GREEN URBANISM: Transforming the City for Sustainability

The nations of Africa, Central and Latin America, and most of Asia are collectively known as the Global South, which includes practically 157 of a total of 184 recognized states in the world according to United Nations reports. Metaphorically, it can be argued that most of the efforts in architectural production, city planning, place making, place management, and urban development are taking place in the Global South and will continue to be so over the next several decades.

Affordable housing has long been an important planning and design concern in large urban areas and around the peripheries of major cities where population growth has led to an increasing demand for descent housing environments. The issue of affordability has attracted researchers and scholars to explore planning and design determinants, financing mechanisms, cultural and social issues, and construction and building techniques. This interest has been the case for several decades since affordable housing themes have offered a rich research area that involves many paradoxes that keep presenting challenges for planners, architects, and decision makers. Housing costs are increasing in most cities and incomes are not increasing at the same rate. Governments, on the other hand, are unable to provide sufficient housing stock to bridge the gap between demand and supply due to decreasing housing budgets and the lack of investment.

Much of the world, is currently experiencing intense growth, especially in and around cities. Most conventional practitioners of modern design and construction find it easier to make buildings as if nature and place did not exist. Cars and factories might be thought as the most obvious enemies of the environment, but buildings consume more than half the energy used worldwide. Attempts to destroy building traditions have been associated in some countries with a drive to modernize. Beyond the traditional aspects of dwelling, the impact of globalization and its effect on rural economies, environmental problems, rapid urbanization and the unprecedented scale of housing problems which confront the peoples of the world in the twenty-first century, bring a new urgency to the study of the vernacular architecture in a sustaining sense. In this work, the concept of “sustainability” will be taken into consideration especially within the building scale. Vernacular architecture in the past produced a built environment which met people's needs without deteriorating the environment. This paper discusses the concept of sustainability in building design and connects it to the vernacular architecture with the search of the vernacular Antiochia houses as a sample; focusing on its architectural properties in detail. The study concludes that what is expected of architects in the current century is, wherever they work, they are to understand and digest the nature of climate, history and culture, that is to say, to obtain inspiration from the essence of place and to contribute to the creation of relevant architecture and city for a sustainable future.

Following the positive call for a special issue on Architectural Pedagogies and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the purpose of this overview article is to contextualise reflections on nine selected articles, within recent efforts made by professional organisations, which aspire to blend sustainable development into the collective psyche of both academics and future professionals.

This article adopts four lines of inquiry by capturing key insights on the place of sustainable design knowledge in architectural education validation and accreditation at both national and global scales; presenting analytical narratives on the recent global efforts that embrace excellence in architectural pedagogy through addressing SDGs; elucidating the two knowledge spaces, centred on pedagogy and sustainability, which are strengthened and supported by Archnet-IJAR, and offering reflections on the nine articles published in this special issue that aims at integration of the two knowledge spaces.

Contextualisation and reflective narratives offer insights into current efforts and demonstrate a clear commitment of professional organisations to embed values relevant to SDGs. Efforts of the Education Commission of the International Union of Architects and the UNESCO-UIA Validation Council of Architectural Education appear to have advanced significantly over recent years with a clear prospect for a sustainable future. The nine articles published in this special issue respond clearly to the goal of Quality Education (SDG4), but not all of them have addressed the goals related to Good Health and Well-being (SDG3) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11), and their place in architectural pedagogy. However, they take a step further to address aspects of climate change, globalisation, sustainable architecture and urbanism, social sustainability, global north/global south dialectics and decolonisation.

The findings offer opportunities to recognise efforts by professional organisations, map key pedagogical experiments into these efforts, while providing lessons learned from best practices aiming to effectively integrate SDGs into architectural pedagogy.

No serious effort has been made to articulate the integration of SDGs into architectural education at the level of research or design studio pedagogical practice. Addressing architectural pedagogies and sustainable development is predicated on the fact that there is very little written or known on integrating SDGs into architectural education and design pedagogy. Understanding, appreciating, and sharing various efforts and approaches to incorporate SDGs into architectural pedagogy is a key step towards a sustainable future.