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Informal housing stands out as a major challenge surrounding the massive reconstruction of Syrian cities, devastated by a bloody war and a terrible earthquake. The purpose of this article is to assess the adequacy of the Syrian Law to adequate provide a solution to this problem.

With the purpose of informing the question, this paper offers a legal-institutional analysis of the informal housing phenomenon and the corresponding regulatory responses in Syria. A literature review is conducted, and functional analysis of the legal texts and their effective implementation is provided.

First, informal housing in Syria has been fostered by the existence of an erratic regulation, particularly burdened by the incoherence of passing repressive provisions against informal housing while master plans were conspicuously absent or incomplete. Second, the regulatory policy seems to be leaning toward the urban renewal option, indicating a supply-oriented housing approach that may face serious challenges due to the scarcity of capital. In this context, regulation should not underestimate any policy tools at hand (renewal and upgrading; with the contribution of public, private and cooperative sectors).

Although there have been several studies on informal housing in Syria, none has taken a legal institutionalist approach. Furthermore, this study offers an up-to-date account of the problem, taking into account the problematic after the 2023 earthquake and the content of Law 2/2023.

The general concept of public space in Saudi Arabia is relatively recent; it is the result of an attempt to modernize several conservative traditions and norms, as well as the ambitious vision of 2030, which reprioritized Saudi cities' public spaces by implementing a quality-of-life improvement program. This study aims to investigate the relationship between mosque location and surrounding urban context as a significant urban design issue in order to comprehend the potential for transforming such an element into a multifunctional public space destination in a dense urban fabric.

The study's objectives are divided into two areas: a spatial configuration analysis to examine the urban context and an urban analysis of the mosque site with a study area boundary of a 400-m buffer zone. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were utilized; in addition, a user feedback survey was conducted in which several key insights were compiled, such as the importance of safety urban element factors, aesthetic elements and green areas in the built environment in making mosques places that are active public spaces.

The study’s main finding encourages governmental institutions to change their mindset from “open space around the mosque” to “the mosque as an element within public space,” which will have a significant impact on how the authors approach, improve and redevelop existing mosque locations. Several concepts were presented that should be reconsidered and redeveloped in order to align with the most recent sustainable urban design tools; the mosque to be overlooked as a community gathering place rather than just a place for religious rituals.

This study is limited to sacred mosque sites primarily found in Islamic countries; it focuses on Saudi Arabian urban and planning practices in relation to sociocultural norms. The authors believe that increasing the number of study samples or broadening the scope of the study to include other Saudi regions or other Middle Eastern countries could yield new findings and insights.

The study offers a conceptual design model based on survey results and qualitative analysis and recommending strategies that planners, designers and policymakers can use to design successful mosque places and pedestrian-oriented developments.

The politically laden nature of postdisaster recovery calls for more research on its governance, especially at the micro-scale. Apart from engineering-oriented frameworks, researchers need new theoretical underpinnings. This paper aims to review the development of the evolutionary resilience theory and use it as an analytical framework to evaluate the governance of post-earthquake reconstruction planning in China.

This paper examines how reconstruction planning is governed in the epicenter town of the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake, highlighting three key qualities of evolutionary resilience. The authors draw on site investigations, semistructured interviews and analysis of official and unpublished documents from various sources.

This paper finds that despite the absence of specific resilience statements in reconstruction plans of the time, qualities of evolutionary resilience, including social connectedness, flexibility and innovation, were evident in a hybrid and contradictory reconstruction planning system. In this respect, resilience thinking appears in Chinese planning earlier than generally assumed. This paper suggests that this manifestation of resilience was the result of an instrumental utility in addressing socioeconomic uncertainties in the postdisaster environment and, thus, may not be systematic.

This work enriches the understanding of recovery governance from an evolutionary resilience perspective where existing research is insufficient. It also offers ample practical guidance for similar cases in China and elsewhere.

How do we make sense of urban life in the past? What do we do when we study urban history, and to what extent do our methods fully capture the complexities of historical city living? These are crucial questions for any scholar interested in the historical dimensions of urban experience. Notwithstanding the interest of most urban historians in the relationship between the physical form of urban space and its experience by inhabitants and visitors, very few scholars have written histories that systematically integrate these two areas of inquiry. In this chapter, we argue that such research requires a method and an accompanying tool that can analyze historical urban life in a more integrated, holistic way. We propose a way forward by introducing the Time Machine platform as a scalable data visualization and analysis tool for researching everyday urban experience across space and time. To illustrate the potential we focus on a case study: the area of the Bloemstraat in early modern Amsterdam. Unpacking a section of the Bloemstraat, house by house and room by room, we show how the Time Machine forms an instrument to connect spatial layouts to the arrangement of objects and to the practical and social use of the space by the inhabitants and visitors. We also sketch how this tool illuminates more dynamic spatial and temporal practices such as how people, goods, and activities are connected to locations in the wider city and beyond.

This paper analyses changes in the activity pattern of Damascus city from late modern era (late Ottoman rule) to the contemporary era. The research objective is to explore the impact of the socio-historical process on the evolving morphological structure of the urban core and to draw implications for post-war reconstruction.

Space Syntax methodology was employed to trace the historical and morphological changes in the urban core of Damascus. The timeframe was divided into five periods covering the city's socio-political transformation and five maps depicting these periods. Local and global integration measures were used to analyse the changes in the urban core across each period. Normalised angular choice (NACH) measure was used to identify the changes in the city planning system.

The results revealed that the urban core corresponded to the main streets, which had socio-economic importance across history. However, introducing a new planning system influenced by Western planning ideals led to the creation of multi-morphological patterns. At the city level, the study found that the urban core was more accessible in the preplanned areas, while the organic expansion of the informal settlements was exclusive of the core area. At the local level, some informal settlements showed an intense core. Intelligibility analysis revealed that earlier periods showed considerably higher values, implying declines in the ease of navigation of the city over time.

This study did not account for the political, economic and cultural factors that could shape morphological changes in Damascus. In addition, the study adopted historical reference points to understand the morphological changes, as high-quality geospatial data was not available to monitor the recent post-war situation.

The research findings give a foundation for a more contextualised historical understanding of spatial structure and changes, which can contribute to the post-war reconstruction and redevelopment of Damascus city.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to trace historical spatial changes in Damascus from a space syntax approach, weaving together socio-historical and configurational studies. In doing so, it shows how historically informed and spatially aware urban planning and design policies can support policymakers and built environment professionals in planning and redevelopment.

The concept of a creative place has been considered by experts, but a review of the research background shows that the definitions provided for creative place are different, and the factors that make an urban space a creative place are not clear. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the concept of creative place and to extract the indicators that make an urban space considered a creative place.

By extensive library studies and using a specialized panel, 59 items in the form of 12 indicators were extracted as identifiers of a creative place and a researcher-made questionnaire was prepared and tested in a case study. Data analysis of this study was performed in two stages by using the factor analysis method in R software.

The factors of “competitive advantage (economically)”, “freedom”, “attractiveness”, “entrepreneurship and professionalism”, “culture and art”, “vitality”, “diversity”, “distinction”, “participation”, “reconstruction, nobility and infrastructure”, “meaning” and “creative experiences” are important as identifiers of creative place, respectively. The evaluation of the case study showed that the total score of creative places in this urban space is 69.6 (out of 100) and “meaning” gained the most point in this urban space.

The factors of this research can be provided to architects and urban planners as identifiers of a creative place and a case study can be evaluated in terms of the degree of compliance with creative place identifiers.

The purpose of the study is to compare methodologies for mapping a historic building, with image capture by smartphones and drones, using photogrammetric techniques for three-dimensional (3D) modeling of the structure. Processes and products are also analyzed, as well as possibilities for storing and visualizing data for structuring a cadastre of historical and artistic heritage are studied.

For mapping with smartphones, the overlapping of photographs was guaranteed, with data acquisition using three different cameras, on the same date as the aerial survey. The models were made from different combinations of camera use. For storage, a conceptual model based on ISO 19.152:2012 is proposed, which was implemented in the MongoDB, resulting in a database for storage. The visualization was carried out on the Cesium ion platform.

The results indicate that the terrestrial 3D reconstruction using smartphones is an efficient alternative to the historical and artistic cadastre, presenting texture quality superior to the aerial survey in a shorter production time. When dealing with the conceptual model, the LADM (Land Administration Domain Model) standardization guarantees interoperability and facilitates data exchange. In addition, it proved to be flexible for the creation of thematic profiles, supporting their effective storage. The insertion of data in the visualization platform was simple and effective, and it even generated sharing links for visualization of the models.

The study analyses a low-cost method with the use of easily accessible devices, with a combination of methodologies and applied techniques. The data storage and visualization method is also simple and flexible, suitable for application in the cadastre of historical heritage.

Contemporary cities are the subject of new forms of visualization that are not only changing how we see the urban world but how it operates as a social environment. This chapter explores Google's Street View database and the Google Maps platform as sites for the production of distinctive new streams of visual data about cities around the world. I argue that this kind of digital infrastructure presents urban researchers with both new opportunities and new challenges, raising complex questions about the role of visual images in the context of the ongoing transition to a digital, computational, and networked image world.

This study defines and critically analyzes Korean high modernism using the Sewoon Sangga project as a case study, as it has significant value in Korea's urban and architectural history.

The methodology applied for this study was a theory-interpretive analysis. This study examines the modernization process of Seoul based on the concept of “high modernism,” in that the theory-interpretive analysis method analyzes historical phenomena centered on a specific concept.

As a form of national belief, the various ideas that give birth to modern cities are defined as “high modernism.” As a Korean megastructure, the Sewoon Sangga project is significant in the history of Korean urbanism and architecture because it is the archetype of Korean high modernism and is representative of South Korea's compressed economic growth. However, soon-to-be-demolished Sewoon Sangga signifies the failure of Korean high modernism. This study identified the critical characteristics of Korean high modernism through the Sewoon Sangga project.

This study analyzed a representative Asian city through the specific concept of high modernism. It transpired that high modernism, which played an important role in the birth and development of modern cities, should be transformed for future cities and architectural development. This study has significance in that it expands the study of the history of urbanism and architecture centered on the West to the same in Asia.

The interview documents early days in the field of disaster risk reduction.

The transcript and video were developed in the context of a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project on the History of DRR.

The transcript presents important developments during the 1980s with valuable lessons about risk reduction.

It takes the readers on a history of the journey of DRR over three decades.