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Cities are both at risk and the cause of risk. The interconnectedness of urban features and systems increases the likelihood of complex disasters and a cascade or “domino” effect from related impacts. However, the lack of research means that our knowledge of urban risk is both scarce and fragmented. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to examine the unique dynamics of risk in urban settings.

Based on literal reading, grounded theory and systems analysis, this conceptual paper presents a framework for understanding and addressing urban risk. It conceptualizes how interdependent, interconnected risk is shaped by urban characteristics and exemplifies its particularities with data and analysis of specific cases. From this, it identifies improvements both in the content and the indicators of the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA2) that will be adopted in 2015.

While it is common to see disasters as “causes”, and the destruction of the built environment as “effects”, this paper highlights that the intricate links between cities and disasters cannot be described by a unidirectional cause-and-effect relationship. The city–disasters nexus is a bidirectional relationship, which constantly shapes, and is shaped by, other processes (such as climate change).

This paper argues that in-depth knowledge of the links between cities’ characteristic features, related systems and disasters is indispensable for addressing root causes and mainstreaming risk reduction into urban sector work. It enables city authorities and other urban actors to improve and adapt their work without negatively influencing the interconnectedness of urban risk.

This paper presents a framework for understanding and addressing urban risk and further demonstrates how the characteristics of the urban fabric (physical/spatial, environmental, social, economic and political/institutional) and related systems increase risk by: intensifying hazards or creating new ones, exacerbating vulnerabilities and negatively affecting existing response and recovery mechanisms.

This chapter examines megaproject design and planning in two “shrinking cities” – Philadelphia, PA and Detroit, MI – and concludes that megaproject “metastasis,” or repeated expansions into surrounding urban fabrics, is promoting the reduction of downtown into a series of self-contained enclaves. While political coalitions are constructing megaprojects, or large public works and/or single buildings, in cities around the world, in the United States, single-building megaprojects motivated by “growth coalitions” of public and private development actors have proliferated in downtowns since 1990. The urban design impacts of these megaprojects on the surrounding urban fabric have been little studied. Data on the institutional history, physical expansion, and relationship of the megaprojects to the urban fabric is combined with a qualitative analysis of megaproject theory and its application to the American condition, as well as to the political economy of development in American shrinking cities. The chapter concludes that megaprojects such as convention centers and casinos tend to expand inexorably once they are introduced into the American downtown. This metastasis results in the destruction of existing older buildings and street networks, the consolidation of street blocks into ever-larger superblocks, and the eventual physical restructuring of downtowns into enclaves of older fabric amidst clusters of megaproject superblocks. Applying Jacobs’ (1992) theory of “moral hybrids” between “commerce and politics” to megaproject metastasis, the chapter argues that while megaprojects may be inevitable in American downtowns, they should be sited away from active, small-scale urban fabrics to reduce the negative impacts of future metastases. The chapter takes a design-oriented perspective on a phenomenon that is almost always understood from a political economy perspective alone. Megaprojects are significant physical entities, and the chapter clarifies their physical impacts on the urban fabric while indicating urban design policy directions to reduce these impacts in future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine spatiality of transitions by combining aspects of urban form to policy analysis. It aims to increase understanding of how urban form relates to potential effects of transport policies on urban mobility transitions.

Novel analytical framework combines concepts of path dependence, path creation and path destabilisation to three urban fabrics (walking, transit and car cities), to study the transition potential of recent transport policy measures influencing the Helsinki region in Finland.

Analysis showed that the potential effects of single policy measures often reach over all three urban fabrics. A policy measure may simultaneously contain elements of both path dependence, i.e. support for fossil-fuel based private motoring in the car city and path creation, i.e. stimulation of innovations in transit or walking cities. Policy outcomes are often conditional on implementation of other policy measures. For transition governance, this indicates that policy mixes should both destabilise car cities and enforce path creation in walking and transit cities.

Findings are based on potential rather than evaluated impacts and a limited sample of policies.

Findings support previous research on the importance of policy coherence: multiple policies and coherence across domains are important. They demonstrate the usefulness of analysing recent or planned policies from the transition perspective.

The paper provides novel insights by combining policy analysis to the spatial model of overlapping urban fabrics. In addition, it applies the concepts of path dependence, path creation and path destabilisation in a new way.

To reduce financial and human losses, managing risks associated with earthquakes is essential in practice. However, in using common risk management methods, experts are often faced with ambiguities that can create profound challenges for risk management. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a logical and straightforward risk assessment model to provide scientific and accurate answers to complex problems. This study aims to recommend an innovative combined method based on the probability-impact (P-I) approach and intuitionistic fuzzy set theory to identify and prioritize the essential earthquake risks associated with worn-out urban fabrics in the context of Iran.

The opinions of 15 experts in the fields of civil engineering and urban construction were gathered during brainstorming sessions. These brainstorming sessions were conducted to determine the probability of risks and the effect of identified risks. After calculating the severity of risks using the P-I approach and converting them to intuitionistic fuzzy sets, the risks were measured and prioritized based on their individual scores.

The study results indicated that risk of damage due to buildings’ age and flooding risk had the highest and lowest priorities in causes of financial damage, respectively. Furthermore, the risk of damage due to building quality (demolition) and building age was the most important. The risk of flooding and damage to communication networks has the lowest importance among causes of fatalities in worn-out urban fabrics.

The study findings and recommendations can be served as a policy and consultative instrument for the relevant stakeholders in the area of urban management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the direct and indirect impacts of urban Syrian refugees on the residential urban fabric of Al Mafraq city physically and socially. Physically means regarding architectural style and socially means regarding social cohesion and sense of community. Therefore, the research questions are: What are the main source of tensions between the urban Syrian refugees and Al Mafraq host community that hinders the social cohesion? And what is the impact of the urban Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city socially and architecturally?

Different research methods were used to explore and provide a rich description of the direct and indirect impacts of urban Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city architecturally and socially. Desk reviews, focus group discussions and semi-structured individual in-depth interviews were used to explore the social impact of the Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city. In addition, a qualitative comparative analysis was used to explore their impact on architectural style and urban sprawl.

The results show that changes have occurred on the character of the residential environment resulting in a conversion about the urban fabric of Al Mafraq city both physically, in regard to architectural style, and socially, regarding social cohesion and sense of community. Physically, the city suffers from a decline in the uniformity of the built environment, resulting in a partial loss of its identity as a homogenous place with calm, cohesive residential neighborhoods. On the other hand, the social fabric of the city is losing its homogeneity and solidarity, causing a decline in the sense of community, social cohesion and levels of trust, and a rise in the social tension leading to severe conflicts among community members.

The different stakeholders should express high concern for the different sources of tensions between the urban Syrian refugee and Al Mafraq host community. They should foster formal and informal communication and promote dialogue between the two communities to improve social relations and reduce the tension between them. The consequences of Syrian asylum on hosting countries present an issue that has been vastly studied by several scholars and international agencies. Research, reports and surveys all denote the negative impact of refugees, especially in cases where resources are scarce, as is the case with Jordan. As a part of such consequences, Al Mafraq city is moving in the wrong direction as a result of the increasing flow of refugees.

The current discourse about the influence of urban refugees on social and architectural style among host communities lacks veracity. Therefore, the significance of this research is offering an alternative academic view to enrich current knowledge and encourage further discourse research about urban refugees. In addition, this research is a comprehensive and double focused, not just on social inclusion and tensions but on urban environment and architecture. This research is useful for architects, urban designers and planners, sociologists, policymakers and humanitarian and peace-building practitioners in the urban non-camp complex emergency setting.

This paper aims to identify relevant innovations in Tokyo’s spatial articulation of infrastructure, building and public space, intertwining large-scale networks with local scale urban fabrics, to inform urban management towards sustainable urban transitions.

The research used a methodological combination of literature review, relevant case identification and analysis, on-site survey and photography, morphological interpretation through cartographic analysis and urban space and architectural redrawing and discussion under the conceptual framework.

Under Japan’s cultural construct, public/private thresholds are blurred and layered, defining a public space network which includes not only large-scale urban objects, such as railroad and commercial hubs but also small scale, hybrid and rather aweless forms of urban space, which can be of interest to the challenges of sustainable urban transition.

Adaptations in urban management and design need to consider the multi-scalar embeddedness of urban networks in local fabrics, considering public space structure and socio-cultural specificities. Limitations to growth-oriented rationale require increasingly decentralized networks and more hybrid spatial configurations in buildings, infrastructures and public space.

Tokyo represents an example of how a network-dependent metropolis, accommodates highly adaptive, inconspicuous and decentralized forms of basic service provision with an impact on the perception, use and management of public space. The main argument lies in the potential that these spatial arrangements hold as references for contemporary urban management and design in what pertains to societal challenges, low-carbon transition and network optimization.

The objective of this paper is mainly to contribute to and activate, the process of saving and preserving the rich tangible and intangible heritage embraced in the historic center of Al-Najaf city. This was possible through examining the existing historic urban and architectural structures of the city, unveiling the major issues that are threatening both its traditional cultural and architectural identity, and finally analyzing similar examples that proved to be successful in addressing similar problems in order to derive possible strategies for saving, preserving and revitalizing the historical center of Al-Najaf Old City.

This paper addresses the major problems of heritage preservation in Al-Najaf City (750 AD), which is one of the historical and most sacred religious centers especially for Shia Muslims around the world. Despite its importance, the rich cultural and architectural heritage of the city is dramatically neglected and seriously threatened to be lost.

Preservation in Al-Najaf City is proposed as a sustainable development strategy. Top-down and bottom-up strategies are proposed not only for preserving the historic architectural and urban characteristics of the city but also for reviving its social and cultural activities and traditions.

The major issues addressed in this paper include the fragmentation and decentralization of the cohesive traditional urban fabric, the disruption of the spatial organization, the deformation of the traditional architectural characteristics of the city and its skyline, the discontinuity of facades' patterns, the destruction and demolition of historical buildings, the transformation of land use, and the regression of traditional social and cultural activities.

This paper focuses on the morphological transformations of Cairo's historic cemeteries that currently form a significant part of historic Cairo designated by the UNESCO as a world heritage site. Cairo's historic cemetery continues to be a main burial ground for the city reflecting layers of funeral epochs. Besides offering burial grounds, Cairo's city of the dead had always hosted living functions including residential and crafts among other activities.

Adopting a historico-geographical approach, this study traces morphological transformations of the eastern necropolis of Cairo. Using analysis of archival documents, cartographic and photographic analysis of the eastern necropolis, the study detects changes on three major aspects: (1) impacts of the ever-growing urban city core; (2) transformation of the cemetery's internal urban fabric and (3) change of the size of the residential urban block inside the cemetery.

Findings highlight alarming transformations on the said aspects, threatening the historic value and the urban integrity of Cairo's eastern necropolis. This calls for rising necessities of documentation projects for Cairo's necropolis, as well as urgent necessity of strict applications of local laws of urban conservation.

Despite their rich urban variety, cemeteries have been rarely investigated within the scope of urban morphology. This paper is among the few works that investigate cemeteries using tools and approaches of urban morphology. It also calls for further applications of morphological investigations and wider adoption of morphological approaches for the study of historic cemeteries in order to support their preservation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualisation of the Smart Sustainable City (SSC) with new concepts of resilience thinking in relation to urgent societal challenges facing the built environment. The paper aims to identify novel methodologies for smart reuse of heritage sites with a pluralist past as integral to inclusive urban development.

SSC concepts in the global literature are studied to define a new reference framework for integrated urban planning strategies in which cultural resilience and co-creation matter. This framework, augmented by UNESCO’s holistic recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), was tested in two investigative projects: the historic centre of South Africa’s capital Tshwane and the proximate former Westfort leprosy colony.

The research confirms that SSC concepts need enlargement to become more inclusive in acknowledging “cultural diversity” of communities and engaging “chrono-diversity” of extant fabric. A paradigm shift in the discourse on integrated urban (re)development and adaptive reuse of built heritage is identified, influenced by resilience and sustainability thinking. Both projects show that different architectural intervention strategies are required to modulate built fabric and its emergent qualities and to unlock embedded cultural energy.

Together with a critical review of SSC concepts and the HUL in relation to urban (re)development, this paper provides innovative methodologies on creative adaptation of urban heritage, reconciling “hard” and “soft” issues, tested in the highly resilient systems of Tshwane.

This paper is intended to assess the developments conducted on the master plan of Old Najaf, mainly in three areas: the Imam Ali Holy Shrine and its surroundings, the Great Market Area and the location of the Town of Visitors.

In order to analyse the implementation of the transformation phases in Old Najaf, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) technique was used to identify and organise the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the examined case study of the city's historic centre. At the first stage, all available data (photographs, maps, documents and reports) were collected from different sources, including previous studies by governmental institutions, departments and agencies. Ultimately, the SWOT analysis was used for each identified phase in the morphological evolution of the historic centre. This can offer an opportunity to observe the implications of urban planning practices in Old Najaf from the mid-20th century to the present day. In order to identify the well-organised urban design practices and appropriate strategies, the implemented studies and projects were examined by the four factors of the SWOT analysis.

The current results have revealed important urban transformations, already made and/or ongoing, of those aforementioned three main areas, which imply a great loss of the city's traditional character and urban heritage. Further, the environmental and socio-economic issues should be involved in the analysis to evaluate how they have influenced the current outcomes of Old Najaf in relation to the urban configuration and orientation.

The rich cultural and architectural heritage of Al-Najaf historic centre is dramatically neglected and seriously threatened to be lost. Hence, conservation on both tangible and intangible levels is urgently needed. It is the first paper which focussed on this problem and tries to learn from the British Conservation Experiences in this field.