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This paper offers a unique perspective on the urbanisation process in developing cities, with a particular focus on the region of the Gulf States. Beyond economic considerations, the analysis sheds light on the complex interplay of socio-cultural factors, gender dynamics and urban development. Based on the calls for human-centred approaches to rethinking urban design and management of cities require the integration of these cities’ inhabitants’ lived experiences, that impact residents’ daily lives. The focus is on the importance of women’s perspectives in the development process.

The paper uses a systematic literature review that builds on existing knowledge relating to urbanisation, modernisation, sustainable cities, gender and the Arabian Gulf. It uses Lefebvre’s 'right to the city' theory to understand the evolution of the Gulf Cities which is a novel approach. This adaptation offers a unique perspective on the transformations and challenges that these urban spaces face. Furthermore, it offers a firm foundation for developing advanced knowledge on the interdisciplinary nature of the topic discussed and assists in integrating empirical findings and perspectives from different resources.

The extreme levels of transformation in urbanisation in the Gulf States built cities that are no longer solely places for settlement, production and services but operate as significant influencers on the social, economic and political relations that produced design and cultural challenges. These cities became epicentres of power and politics that shaped the national visions and influenced policy. The process of inclusive and considerate urban development that the Arabian Gulf region is aiming to embark on is not a new exclusive strategy. But a process that has been implemented and tested in other urbanised areas globally.

Very little historical urban research on the Arabian Gulf countries exists, hence, the difficulty in researching the Gulf urbanisation process or providing historical encounters of the change.

This paper delves into the gendered aspects of urban planning, an aspect that is frequently overlooked. It contributes to the discourse on gender inclusivity in urban spaces by focussing on Khaleeji women’s experiences, offering insights that go beyond economic considerations. The use of Lefebvre’s “right to the city” theory to understand the evolution of the Gulf Cities is a unique approach. It investigates the interaction of various factors such as economic, cultural and political influences on Gulf urban development. This adaptation offers a distinctive perspective on the transformations and challenges that these urban spaces face.

This paper introduces the YouWalk-UOS mobile application, a tool that revolutionises the assessment of urban open spaces (UOS). The paper demonstrates how integrating real-time, on-ground observations with users’ reactions into a digital platform can transform the evaluation of urban open spaces. It seeks to address the existing shortcomings of traditional UOS assessment methods and underscore the need for innovative, adaptable and inclusive approaches.

Emphasizing the necessity of UOS for mental and physical health, community interaction and social and environmental resilience in cities, the methodology involves a comprehensive analysis of a number of theoretical frameworks that have historically influenced urban open space conceptualisation, design and assessment. The approach includes a critical review of traditional UOS assessment methods, contrasting them with the capabilities of the proposed YouWalk-UOS application. Building on the reviewed theoretical frameworks, the methodology articulates the application’s design, which encompasses 36 factors across three assessment domains: functional, social and perceptual and provides insights into how technology can be leveraged to offer a more holistic and participatory approach to urban space assessment.

YouWalk-UOS application represents an important advancement in urban space assessment, moving beyond the constraints of traditional methods. The application facilitates a co-assessment approach, enabling community members to actively participate in the evaluation and development of their urban environments. Findings highlight the essential role of technology in making urban space assessment more user-centred, aligning more closely with community needs and aspirations.

The originality lies in the focus on the co-assessment approach and integration of mobile technology into urban open space assessment, a relatively unexplored area in urban design literature. The application stands out as an innovative solution, offering a new perspective on engaging communities in co-assessing their environments. This research contributes to the discourse on urban design and planning by providing a fresh look at the intersection of technology, user engagement and urban space assessment.

In this study, the deployment of an integrated Quality Function Deployment (QFD) decision framework is presented to help cities design targeted strategies to become “smart”. Arguably smart cities leverage advanced technologies to enhance their smartness to improve everyday urban life. To this end, a QFD – Analytic Hierarchy Process – Analytic Network Process (QFD-AHP-ANP) framework is proposed to deliver guidance for selecting the appropriate mix of smart technologies based on the specific smart needs of each city.

The AHP and ANP methods are incorporated into QFD to enhance its methodological robustness in formulating the decision problem. AHP accurately captures and translates the “Voice of the Experts” into prioritized “Smart City” dimensions, while establishing inter-relationships between these dimensions and “Smart City Technologies”. Meanwhile, ANP explores tradeoffs among the technologies, enabling well-informed decisions. The framework’s effectiveness is evaluated through an illustrative application in the city of Thessaloniki.

Applying the framework to this real-world context confirms its practicality and utility, demonstrating its ability to particularize local, social, political, environmental and economic trends through the resulting mix of technologies in smart urban development strategies.

The importance of this study lies in several aspects. Firstly, it introduces a novel QFD decision framework tailored for smart city strategic planning. Secondly, it contributes to the operationalization of the smart city concept by providing guidance for cities to effectively adopt smart technologies. Finally, this study represents a new field of application for QFD, expanding its scope beyond its traditional domains.

The concept of green urban mobility has emerged as one of the best approaches for promoting environmental-friendly transportation in local communities. Green urban mobility aims to reshape public transportation system and enhance mobility, with emphasis on deploying digital technologies to promote sustainable public transportation. Therefore, this study aims to analyze existing public transportation policies by exploring how local communities can facilitate green urban mobility by developing a sociotechnical urban-based mobility model highlighting key factors that impact regions transitioning toward sustainable transportation.

This study investigates “the role of data for green urban mobility policies toward sustainable public transportation in local communities” in the form of a systematic literature review and insights from Norway. Secondary data from the literature and qualitative analysis of the national transport plan document was descriptively analyzed to provide inference.

Findings from this study provides specific measures and recommendations as actions for achieving a national green mobility practice. More important, findings from this study offers evidence from the Norwegian context to support decision-makers and stakeholders on how sustainable public transportation can be achieved in local communities. In addition, findings present data-driven initiatives being put in place to promote green urban mobility to decrease the footprint from public transportation in local municipalities.

This study provides green mobility policies as mechanisms to be used to achieve a sustainable public transportation in local communities. Practically, this study advocates for the use of data to support green urban mobility for transport providers, businesses and municipalities administration by analyzing and forecasting mobility demand and supply in terms of route, cost, time, network connection and mode choice.

This study provides factors that would promote public and nonmotorized transportation and also aid toward achieving a national green urban mobility strategy. Socially, findings from this study provides evidence on specific green urban mobility measures to be adopted by stakeholders in local communities.

This study presents a sociotechnical urban-based mobility model that is positioned between the intersection of “human behavior” and “infrastructural design” grounded on the factors that influence green urban mobility policies for local communities transiting to a sustainable public transportation. Also, this study explores key factors that may influence green urban mobility policies for local communities toward achieving a more sustainable public transportation leading to a more inclusive, equitable and accessible urban environment.

This paper aims to consider the relationship between urban events and urban public space, asking whether cities have enough space for events and whether events have enough space in cities.

Policy analysis surrounding events and festivals in the Netherlands is used to understand the dynamics of urban events, supported by content analysis of policy documents. A vignette of event space struggles in Amsterdam illustrates the contradictions of the event/space relationship.

The research identifies a policy shift in the Netherlands towards urban events from expansive, festivalisation strategies to defensive, NIMBYist policies. It exposes contradictions between protecting space as a living resource and the exploitation of space for regenerative purposes. Three future scenarios for urban events are outlined: conflict and competition, growth and harmony and digitalisation and virtualisation.

Develops scenarios for the future relationship between events and urban space.

Provides an analysis of the recursive spatial implications of the growth of the events sector for cities and the growth of cities for events.

Sacred forests are biocultural landscapes deeply rooted in centuries-old traditions of spiritual veneration. These sacred sites, including shrines, temple forests churches and graveyards, have historically been significant reservoirs of traditional resource management practices underpinned by spiritual reverence. However, despite their cultural and ecological importance, the cultural ecosystem services inherent to these sacred forests remain unexplored, particularly in urban settings.

This study focused on six sacred sites within Kanazawa City, Japan, using a meticulous face-to-face survey with 342 participants. We collected data on the extent of forest utilisation, the breadth of activities engaged in by visitors and their holistic appraisal of the rendered cultural ecosystem services. The findings illustrate the multifaceted benefits of urban sacred forests, encompassing participation in religious ceremonies, cultural events and festivals, complemented by educational programming that elucidates the historical and traditional underpinnings of the shrines and their surrounding communities.

It has been observed that urban forests have a crucial role in providing spiritual and communal connectivity, preserving traditional heritage, offering vital aesthetic values as green spaces and making visitors connected with nature while they are in the urban landscape. However, a concerning trend has emerged, as the younger demographic appears to lack interest in participating in the stewardship and cultural activities associated with these biocultural landscapes. Community engagement strategies must be strengthened, conservation measures should be implemented and cultural awareness programs need to be established to ensure the perpetuation and appreciation of these valuable urban sacred forests.

This study provides original perspectives on the measurable cultural ecosystem services and intangible values associated with urban sacred forests using the sacred forests in Kanazawa City, Japan. Our research illuminates the various advantages that visitors derive by examining the intersection of spiritual traditions, resource management practices and cultural significance, which has been relatively unexplored. The present study provides a significant basis for establishing initiatives that seek to promote the cultivation of respect and responsibility towards urban sacred forests.

This study aims to propose resident-based brand equity models on green, creative and smart development themes through a multi-sample telephone survey on Hong Kong residents (n = 751).

This research adopted a quantitative approach with a round of questionnaire-based survey carried out anonymously on adult citizens who have stayed in Hong Kong for more than one year. Telephone survey was performed by a professional survey research centre with trained interviewers between May and July 2022.

The study identifies the magnitude of these city brand equity attributes and reconfigured their composition under separate samples of Hong Kong residents. The results reveal the relatively stronger brand equity for developing Hong Kong as a smart city brand compared with green and creative branding.

The research findings might carry a major limitation of varied interpretations and stereotypes of each city theme (green, creative and smart) by local residents. To minimize the expected bias, two core questions were added to provide respondents with information on each theme before the main survey questions. The questions’ wording was also simplified to ensure the constraint and inconsistency of layman effect.

The common attributes across the themes, including distinctiveness, uniqueness, confidence, positive image, liveability, long-term residence, feature familiarity and top-of-mind, indicate the most prominent aspects of brand equity formation and enhancement. Since urban sustainability does not follow a single path of strategies and infrastructure development, city brand process should also follow a selective approach, which clearly identifies a multiplicity of local interests that could create the best outcomes and the strongest brand equity for the city.

The factor allocation and regression analysis elucidate different configurations of the determining factors with a three-factor model for green city brand equity and two-factor models for the other ones. The findings encore some previous studies supporting the differentiation between common attributes and distinctive attributes, and the overlapping approach to unleash the strongest integration of attributes of brand equity.

A growing body of evidence points to the influence of location and allocation decisions on the structure of healthcare networks. The authors introduced a three-level hierarchical facility location model to minimize travel time in the healthcare system under uncertainty.

Most healthcare networks are hierarchical and, as a result, the linkage between their levels makes it difficult to specify the location of the facilities. In this article, the authors present a hybrid approach according to data envelopment analysis and robust programming to design a healthcare network. In the first phase, the efficiency of each potential location is calculated based on the non-radial range-adjusted measure considering desirable and undesirable outputs based on a number of criteria such as the target area's population, proximity to earthquake faults, quality of urban life, urban decrepitude, etc. The locations deemed suitable are then used as candidate locations in the mathematical model. In the second phase, based on the proposed robust optimization model, called light robustness, the location and allocation decisions are adopted.

The developed model is evaluated using an actual-world case study in District 1 of Tehran, Iran and relevant results and different sensitivity analyses were presented as well. When the percentage of referral parameters changes, the value of the robust model's objective function increases.

The contributions of this article are listed as follows: Considering desirable and undesirable criteria to selecting candidate locations, providing a robust programming model for building a service network and applying the developed model to an actual-world case study.

Recently, the serviceability of the transportation infrastructure in urban areas has become crucial. Any impact of the hazardous conditions on the urban road network causes significant disruption to the functioning of the urban region, making the city’s resilience a point of concern. Thereby, the purpose of the study is to examine the city’s recovery capacity to absorb the impacts of adverse events like urban floods.

This study examines the road network resilience for an urban flood event for zones proposed by the Municipal Corporation to develop multiple central business districts. This study proposes a novel approach to measure the resilience of road networks in an urban region under floods caused due to heavy rainfall. A novel Road Network Resilience Index (RNRI) based on the serviceability of the road network during floods is proposed, estimated using Analytic Hierarchy Process - Multiple Criteria Evaluation (AHP-MCE) approaches by using the change in street centrality, impervious area and road network density. This study examines and analyses the resilience of road networks in two conditions: flood and nonflood conditions. Resilience was estimated for both the conditions at the city level and the decentralized zone level.

Based on RNRI values, this study identifies zones having a lower or higher resilience index. The central, southern and eastern zones have lower road network resilience and western and northern zones have high road network resilience.

The proposed methodology can be used to increase road network resilience within the city under flood conditions.

The previous literature on road network resilience concentrates on the physical properties of roads after flood events. This study demonstrates the use of nonstructural measures to improve the resilience of the road network by innovatively using the AHP-MCE approach and street centrality to measure the resilience of the road network.