Search results

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 In addition, the study adopted historical reference points to understand the morphological changes, as high-quality geospatial data was not available to monitor the recent post-war situation.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.

This study aims to demonstrate how women's involvement in urban planning and design in Gulf cities improves urban space's inclusivity and strengthens identity through cultural heritage revitalisation. It also promotes the participation of women in architecture and city-making by showcasing how shaping urban spaces offers local communities opportunities for social interaction and a more inclusive environment.

The paper critically compares two case studies in the Gulf region—one in the United Arab Emirates and the other in Bahrain—according to four inclusion criteria: context connection, cultural sensitivity, community engagement and choices of amenities. These inclusion criteria are also applied to an experimental project by women architects' students in Saudi Arabia to inspire the future female architects of the Gulf region. From urban to architectural scales, the project offers a glance into the heritage design by women architects.

In light of this critical analysis, this study highlights the sensitivity to issues related to the revitalisation of urban areas by women architects. The case studies identified show the role of the female architect in making architecture and linking cultural heritage with contemporary themes. These projects stitch the past with the present and link cultural identity with aspects related to sustainable architecture. Therefore, valorising women's architectural experience is necessary to contribute to sustainable urban development in the Gulf region and beyond.

The present study addresses the importance of the role of women architects in the Gulf region. The research promotes the full and equal participation of women in the architecture and construction of the city to recognise their achievements by increasing their involvement in the work in a more integrated and balanced way.

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.

This paper aims to explore the opinions of business owners in an industrial area of Abu Dhabi that could be potentially turned into an art tourism destination.

By mobilizing the concept of “gentrification aesthetics,” the authors use a recall technique to explore support toward art from business owners, regression analyses to understand how the type and content of art predicts gentrification support and chi-square to research the differences between respondents who support the area to become a creative place and those who do not.

A model that explains the connection between gentrification aesthetics and art tourism is presented.

The authors’ proposed model results from testing the possibilities for expanding art tourism specifically and may not apply to other types of tourism. Future research is needed to understand whether and how the model can be applied to other forms of tourist consumption.

The current research presents a case study on how tourism can be strategically expanded into more rural places in a city.

The authors found significant differences between respondents who would like to see Mussafah becoming a creative place in five years and those who believe Mussafah needs to be(come) something else.

While work on tourism gentrification has been conducted, the nexus between gentrification aesthetics and art tourism cannot be found. Their relation can help to expend (art) tourism from busy cultural attractions to industrial areas. The present research fills this gap.

The purpose of this article is to revisit the concepts of city singularity and identity, as well as the concept’s related topics (i.e. place identity, place attachment and place dependence). The aim is to investigate the impact of development projects on people's preferences for old and contemporary features in modern cities. The evidence for this can be seen mainly at historical sites such as Heliopolis in Cairo, Egypt.

The authors investigated how development projects affect place identity and city singularity through a three-step process. As a first step, an online questionnaire was administered to experts to assess the characteristics that shape the identity of local districts. In the second and third steps, interviews were conducted, followed by online surveys directed at Heliopolis residents and non-residents. The weight of people’s preferences was determined using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM).

The results highlighted people's preferences to consider when developing projects at historical sites. Based on these preferences, the authors’ concluded remarks provide insight into some considerations for developing projects in historic places.

The added value here is surveying people’s preferences about development projects in historical places. The physical and social components interplay contributes to city identity and singularity. Based on these preferences, this investigation offers valuable insights into enhancing historical site development.

Mainstream narratives in Indian history do not delve into the checkered history of the west coast. The reasons for this are many, including a predominantly center-outwards viewpoint of historians. West coast has always been open to sea route influences aiding its diversity. However, the lack of natural defense against colonizers from the sea destroyed indigenous and personal heritage. Small town narratives include uprooting, lack of access to past heritage and new settlement creation. The heritage of this everyday landscape shaped by human grit is the subject of the study.

This qualitative ethnographic study includes document analysis, transect walking, architectural built form study, open interviews and participatory observations.

The motivations for heritage management can be grouped into economic, cultural and technological. From a financial point of view, the urban core studied is still relevant and sustainable. Likewise, the Krishna temple dominates the cultural discussion and architectural documentation as a religious center. However, the cultural heritage of business streets and the third motivation of building technology have been largely ignored. This disregard is evident from neglect and the pastiche use of monumental or ornamental styles alien to the region for restoration efforts.

“Heritage is personal and individual as well as collective and universal” (Mire, 2016). The Pete heritage is not just crucial for the communities they house but the town as a whole. Their nonimpervious nature means that they hold collective memories for everyone. Attention to memories and monuments will increase the possibilities of shared responsibility between various stakeholders (Swenson et al., 2012). Therefore, they should be seen as a part of the larger whole.

This paper argues for the recent global bottom-up approach in heritage management rather than the conventional established practices. Established heritage management focuses on the mainstream, royal or specific ethnic heritage in the Indian subcontinent. The heritage of the common person rarely has the grandeur of monumental architecture taken up for preservation by the state. As a result, societies' individual and collective heritage are at risk of rapid erasure under the pressures of modernization. Built forms are repositories of cultural information; therefore, a sustainable instrument for the preservation of everyday heritage can be created with culture as an actuator. This study looks at the narrative of the historical coastal small-town business core created by internal mass migration due to colonization.

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.

In the post-pandemic era urban ecosystem planning has become critically important. Given the emphasis on relevant issues concerning the complex interactions between human civilizations and natural systems within urban environments in the new normal, this article aims to enrich the field of knowledge management developing a cross-cultural analysis for clarifying the role of knowledge in planning and urban ecosystems.

This paper is conceptual in nature. Based on a theoretical foundation built by a critical literature review and data from the China Statistical Yearbook and China’s National Bureau of Statistics, this paper introduces some emerging real-impact topics regarding the connections between humanistic knowledge and urban planning. A comparative analysis between the capital city of Chang’an in the Tang dynasty of China and the capital city of Athens in Ancient Greek was used for explaining the influence of knowledge on successful urban planning.

The understanding the role of cross-cultural differences in knowledge management and practices for urban ecosystems offer the opportunities for rethinking consolidated approach to the interaction among social, economic, and environmental dimensions in urban settings.

This paper implies a new inter-disciplinary research field of great interest for the real impact KM community by illuminating how knowledge management is central in urban planning and across cultures.

Crowded urban regions pose a complex urban challenge that can adversely affect urban residents, encompassing aspects like mental and physical well-being, overall livability and quality of life. The complexity in determining the factors influencing the crowding perception, which encompass subjective and situational psychological factors alongside physical and environmental attributes, imparts ambiguity to planners' approach. This study aims to unravel the intricate interplay between crowding and the physical attributes inherent in the built environment.

This literature review analyses theories linking urban planning and environmental psychology to uncover gaps in the relationship between urban design principles and residents' perceptions of crowding. It also explores influential variables affecting crowding perception and diverse methodologies across contexts.

The study built upon a broad literature review which is expected to summarise and classify the variables of urban planning components and approaches according to their impacts on the psychological perception of crowding. Furthermore, highlighting a number of recommendations that can be considered a guide for planners and urban designers to enhance the urban experience and reduce the perception of crowding.

This study seeks to improve the overall experience of crowding in densely populated urban areas. It accomplishes this by identifying influential factors and comprehending the associated outcomes in such contexts. Furthermore, it bridges perspectives from various fields to examine relevant policies and strategies to mitigate crowding consequences.

The paper aims to elaborate on the potential for regeneration of Bagamoyo (Tanzania) through adaptive reuse of its heritage sites. The town was the most important harbour for ivory and slaves of the East-African mainland during the 19th and early 20th century and the colonial capital of German East-Africa between 1885 and 1890. Today, it has 85,000 inhabitants who mainly live in informal settlements while stone town closer to the coast is largely abandoned with its historical buildings in a poor state of conservation.

The first part of the paper describes the history and heritage of the old stone town Bagamoyo, and how it impacts its identity. Additionally, it summarises the critical reception of the town's role in the application to UNESCO World Heritage for “The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route”. This, in order to consider the reuse of its heritage sites more as part of a layered regeneration process than of a singular narrative for preservation. The second part presents research-by-design proposals investigating the economic, social and cultural potentialities of three spatial layers: the main street, the coastal strip and the shoreline.

The identity and therefore also urban regeneration of post-colonial towns such as Bagamoyo is the result of a complex combination of different narratives rather than of a singular one.

Bagamoyo's heritage has been studied as a driver for international tourism linked to slavery but without successful implementation. This study proposes an alternative perspective by investigating its potential for urban regeneration in line with local needs. Developed in the context of a master studio of architectural design, it presents an innovative didactic approach. Moreover, the methodology of research-by-design can be inspirational for other historical towns.