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This paper hypothesizes that contemporary Gulf cities are not an evolution of traditional settlements but rather forms of modern cities that emerged during the second half of the 20th century after the discovery of oil, the economic boom following the mid 1970s oil crisis and finally political, economic, technological and communication globalization that swept this region since the beginning of the 21st century. While focusing on the case of Kuwait city, the paper reflects on several examples from the Gulf region cities to discuss their development as hybrid forms of modern cities. The paper adopts the theoretical framework proposed by Appadurai in 1996 to understand the flow of modernity through the Gulf cities' scapes. This theoretical framework provides an adequate understanding of Gulf cities evolution and modifications required to make them more adequate to the Gulf region conditions.

This paper investigates factors influencing the shaping of future learning environments. It focuses on the impact of social and cultural requirements on the sustainability of future learning environment. It argues that while today's learning environments are shaped by yesterday's visions, future learning environments are shaped by toady's' visions that might not be acceptable nor valid for future generations. The case of New Kuwait University City in Shedadiyah is used to illustrate how current social and cultural requirements impact the design of a future university campus and inhibit the production of a sustainable environment. Among several socio-cultural factors, the paper focuses on two significant aspects that have dramatically affected the development of the master plan for the New University City; namely separation of students' sexes and car parking requirements. The first requirement was mandated by a parliament decree to build two separate campuses; one for male students and the other for female students. The implementation of this requirement resulted in the duplication of many educational facilities and immensely increased space and budget requirements. The second requirement reflected dependency on automobiles as primary means of transportation in Kuwait. It resulted in a necessity to allocate large areas of land for vehicular traffic and car parking. These two requirements, as well as other socio-cultural requirements, created a great challenge towards achieving the required level of sustainability. The paper concludes that while recognizing that accommodating clients' social and cultural requirements is necessary for the application of a comprehensive sustainability strategy, these requirements might work against achieving required levels of other aspects of sustainability.

Population diversity is one of the main challenges facing metropolitan centers worldwide. Especially in emerging Arab Gulf countries, where the population is composed of multiple nationalities; socio-physical, socio-economic, and socio-cultural presence in the city is highly noticeable. Doha, the capital of Qatar, is an example of Gulf cities that attract an inflow of foreigners to live and work due to its economic prosperity. It is noticeable that utilization of urban spaces in Doha is affected by socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds of its inhabitants. This study focuses on investigating the experiences of the multicultural groups within the city's spatial dimension. It aims at understanding the cultural, economic and spatial connections of these diverse groups and how the urban environment of the city can be improved to support the experiences of these multicultural populations. The paper explores the experiences of different nationalities according to the social activities distribution of the sub-cultures as an exemplary of other Gulf cities. In depth interviews, questionnaires and systematic observations were conducted to gather information from Qatari and non-Qatari populations focusing on their weekly activities and preferred urban spaces in the city. The paper argues that urban spaces define limits and boundaries for social experiences and interaction based on the cultural and economic background and suggests measures to improve the quality of urban experience of the diverse cultural groups.

The desert was always part of the Arabian culture and a way of life. After the discovery of oil during the 1940's, traditional Arab societies became urbanized and settled in newly constructed cities and towns. The desert became a place to visit for leisure and entertainment by locals and tourists. In Dubai, the desert is used as a tourist attraction for foreigners. In Kuwait, the desert is a seasonal attraction for families and groups during the winter time. This involves informal leisure activities that endanger the fragile desert environment and cause its pollution and degradation. This paper discusses the impact of informal desert tourism activities on the desert sustainability in Kuwait. It warns against the negative impact of current practices on the fragile desert environment as a result of informal local tourism activities. The paper explores successful examples from the region and the world in order to highlight aspects of successful interventions that blend in with the desert context. It suggests sustainable measures to deal with the planning and designing for desert ecotourism facilities that aim at protecting the fragile desert environment from deterioration and eventual extinction.

Whether in school buildings or university campuses the educational process involves many activities that include knowledge acquisition and assimilation, testing students' motivation and academic performance, and faculty and teachers' productivity. The way in which we approach the planning, design, and our overall perception of learning environments makes powerful statements about how we view education; how educational buildings are designed tells us much about how teaching and learning activities occur. Concomitantly, how these activities are accommodated in a responsive educational environment is a critical issue that deserves special attention. While it was said several decades ago that a good teacher can teach anywhere, a growing body of knowledge-derived from knowledge on “evidence-based design” suggests a direct correlation between the physical aspects of the learning environment, teaching processes, and learning outcomes. In its commitment to introduce timely and pressing issues on built environment research, Open House International presents this special edition to debate and reflect on current discourses on sustainable learning environments.

When looking at recent debates on sustainability one can observe that implicit within these debates is a criticism against the values, attitudes, and tools by which most of the built environment has been produced over the years, that has led to social alienation and environmental depletion. Several definitions of sustainability correspond with this criticism, where some definitions focus on environmental criteria while others integrate socio-cultural aspects into environmental concerns. The main idea behind the notion of sustainability is to create an effective system of resource distribution and utilization with a long term perspective in mind (ECE, 1996). A sustainable society in this respect is one that can persist over generations, one that is far sighted enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social systems of support.

The government of UAE helps its nationals to own their private houses. One of the programs that are designed to achieve this goal is the Sheikh Zayed Housing Program (SZHP). It pays grants and loans to nationals to have their own houses. This paper examines the factors that affect the fund allocation of SZHP. The researchers obtained the needed data from the offices of the SZHP. The sample consisted of 394 applicants for the year 2000. Regression models were used to assess the effect of family size, income, marital status and location of the applicants on fund allocation. The research findings show that income, family size and location have the most significant effect on fund allocation.

The purpose of this paper is to define the identity, city identity and architectural identity; to review, analyze and synthesize different pieces from literature to explore and define the factors that shape the city identity; to define the strategies of hybridization process that can be used to re-locate (re-define) the city identity; to examine the most effective factors that shape the identity of Amman city from various perspectives, to examine the relationships/interrelationships between all the factors that shape any city identity from the designers’ perspective, finally, to apply the strategies of hybridization process to re-locate (re-define) Amman’s city identity.

This research used two research methods to collect data as follows: literature review, content analysis and face-face questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the most effective factors that shape the Amman’s identity from different perspectives. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r) was computed to assess the relationships between all factors that shape the identity of any city from the perspective of Jordanian designers and experts.

This research concluded that the factors that shape the city identity are cultural factors (socio-cultural, historical, economical and globalization factors), environmental factors (geographic, climate and building materials factors) and urban and architectural factors (spatial design organization, architectural style, open spaces and parks, urban structure factors). Additionally, the six urban development factors that responsible for the hybridization process in a city are new architectural typology and new special configuration, urban edges and hybrid textures, public hybridization open spaces, roads highway-scapes, urban redevelopment through super sites by star architects and downtown urban developments. This research found that there are different perspectives about the definition and factors that shape the identity of Amman’s city because of differences in cultures, experiences, knowledge, education level and personal preferences. The city identity is not a constant concept. It is changed according to time, place, people, culture, global trends, economic status and experience. Moreover, the correlation results revealed that the relationships/interrelationships between all the factors that shape the identity of any city have strong/very strong positive linear associations and significant relationships (r > 0.89).

Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) should provide a vision to redefine the identity of Amman city and control over the development pressure, built form and image of the city. This vision should be based on research, analysis and adoption of the most effective road map. GAM and all stakeholders should establish and enforce using specific architectural styles, urban design guidelines, building codes, policy tools and land use regulations to re-define the city identity. GAM should review, assess, approve and supervise all development projects through all design and construction phases especially in sensitive areas. GAM should focus on building capacity, empower its architects and planners, and re-organize (re-structure) their units and administrations especially planning and licensing departments to improve the city image and guide development. This research recommended that architects should design new, diverse and innovative architectural concepts, typologies and spatial configurations. Rapid development and new edges should be planned, designed and managed from the parts to the whole. The heterogeneous landscape and everyday activities will improve the vitality of urban and open public spaces and form of public culture. Architects and star architects ought not to make a clear and sharp separation between old and new development, architectural styles and typologies. Architects and urban designers ought to design hybrid physical urban environments, urban morphology, urban multi-functional activities, mix-use buildings, open spaces for social life, street patterns and furniture, squares, architectural style and typologies, spatial connectivity, green spaces and landscape entities. The designers and planners should consider how to create a city for living, working and recreation.

This research defined the identity, city identity, architectural identity and the factors that may shape the city identities. This research proposed and used the hybridization process as a tool to re-locate (re-define) the identity of Amman city and any city to be more obvious. Additionally, this research examined the relationships/interrelationships between the factors that shape the city identity.