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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has been experiencing extensive development in the fields of architecture and planning in recent decades, which has included developing community centers in neighborhoods. These community centers have significant impacts on the social, cultural, recreational and economic lives of the inhabitants. The study has looked into the concept of modeled and non-modeled community centers among 114 neighborhoods. Moreover, the study aims to suggest that decision-makers should make efficient decisions to uphold amenities through the centers at the neighborhood level after considering the evaluation techniques included in this paper to ensure a sustainable urbanization.

The authors collected both qualitative and quantitative information through structured and un-structured interviews in the city of Jeddah. Afterward, the authors evaluated the centers with a summarized grading point based on qualitative judgments. Note that the online questionnaire survey was prepared to distribute in approximately 100 neighborhoods. However, 71 neighborhoods took part in the survey, with a total number of 402 responses. Moreover, the authors made a subjective evaluation of the studied neighborhoods to understand the quality of services offered by the community centers.

The obtained results reveal that the community centers in the city of Jeddah are playing important roles for socialization, allowing younger people to interact in a positive way, providing services to the communities and supporting volunteer work in and around the neighborhoods. Consequently, the research paper emphasizes the future needs of these important social infrastructures as part of a neighborhood design tool in the context of Jeddah city, KSA.

This research attempts to document the need for community centers in the city of Jeddah. Consequently, the study evaluates 26 different community centers to understand whether the improvements are required for supporting community activities. Indeed, few research works have made an effort to study community centers’ role in urban life in a unique geographic context. Through this research project, the authors have highlighted the implications of community centers in urban life in the city of Jeddah.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance and significance of design strategies to enhance flexibility as an in-built design concept of residential building in developing countries. The study considers potential directions of building design in developing countries to ensure maximum benefits of resource utilization.

The study approaches using the qualitative data collection method, mostly based on interviews of local residents. Layouts of residential buildings that have been renovated for several reasons, such as the changes in family size over the last 30 years, have been studied. The concept of zone and margin, based on the theoretical framework developed by Dutch architect, John Habraken, is compared and tested in residential buildings in the city of Khulna.

This paper shows that people change floor layouts of their buildings over time for different reasons; for example, 29 percent of people change plans in order to accommodate more people, 19 percent in order to initiate new businesses, and 13 percent due to change in family structure. However, these facts impose an excessive monetary burden on the owners to re-adjust layouts even though the building does not have the provision to do so. The paper also reveals that people would welcome new plans for future readjustment during the design and construction phases instead of renovation phases.

This paper highlights flexibility and attempts to justify the possibilities to practice in developing countries. As an inherent design strategy of sustainable development, the concept would consider unknown future changes of building layouts and structures. It would consider the minimum reconstruction, or renovation, costs associated for future adaptation.

Slums, in urban areas of the Global South, are often manifested as the spatial manifestation of urban poverty. In many local contexts, eviction of slums is treated as the recipe of urban development initiative, which is actually wrong and short-sighted unsustainable solution. This chapter addresses some of the interlinked issues and highlights how the megacities of the Global South can pursue a more holistic, pro-poor, and sustainable solutions by dealing this developmental challenge.

This chapter is basically an outcome of a policy research, combining information and arguments from different secondary resources.

This chapter offers a better understanding on the causes and consequences of the slums, along with ideas for the government to tackle this issue and promote better livelihoods for the poor citizens. Even though this chapter focuses on the sustainability challenges in Dhaka, it can have policy implications in other regions with similar social, economic, and political conditions.

The discussion in this chapter does not include an empirical modeling or analysis technique so that the problems can be proven quantitatively. In some future research, a more quantitative approach can help to quantify the losses people are facing in terms of social value, monetary losses, and environmental cohesion.

Without making any provisions for jobs and livelihoods for the poor slum dwellers, the process of eviction might cause the total “city management” system to collapse. Then it is no more an urban development initiative, but rather a government-initiated poverty generation process. Therefore, government can think for solutions at different levels – from local to regional scale, including long-term and short-term sustainability strategies.

Often the governments as well as the policy makers in the Global South treat the poverty problems (including slum formations) from a much narrower perspective. They should rather focus on the issue as part of a big developmental picture. The strategies can start both from macro- and micro-levels. On the macro-level, the government can initiate climate-resilient and pro-poor development strategies. On the micro-level, the government, along with nongovernmental organizations and national and international development partners, can focus on skill development opportunities and policies, so that the poor can live legally, wherever they want, with decent employment and livelihood opportunities.

The opportunities and potentials of the coastal zone all over the world have not received much attention, and also the disaster mitigation approaches are seen as a curative measure rather than protective, both of which raise questions about sustainable coastal belt planning and development. What is needed is a multidisciplinary approach to tackle the complexity of social systems, and patterns of vulnerability in those systems. The aim of this paper is to attempt to understand those challenges in context of cyclone SIDR 2007 in Bangladesh.

The combination of spatial and socio‐economic data in this study is based on an empirical analysis. After clustering the geographical boundary, a systematic random sampling technique was applied to identify the respondents for a household survey. A total of 47 percent of the respondents were illiterate and thus required the help of data collectors. In‐depth interviews were conducted with the victims of cyclone Sidr to ascertain their experiences during the event.

The heterogeneous characteristics of the respondents show that the impact of disasters varies from individual to individual, group to group and community to community. It is evident that an affected community waiting for relief and reconstruction materials attracts “dependency on relief works” which makes them more “vulnerable” to other calamities. In the long run it increases the poverty ratio and pressurizes them to stay in a “vulnerability trap” in any type of calamity. Furthermore, it reveals a socio‐infrastructural vulnerability and also the overall “social vulnerability” concepts by using a combination of socio‐spatial data.

This paper contains valuable information regarding the adaptation strategies to cyclone hazards resorted to by coastal peoples in Bangladesh.