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The development of projects for new eco-cities is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon. Alleged eco-cities are being built across a variety of spaces via processes of urbanisation triggering substantial environmental, social and economic impacts. This article investigates how new eco-city projects interpret and practice urban sustainability by focusing on the policy context that underpins their development. The article argues that projects for new eco-cities are shaped in loci by policy agendas tailored around specific economic and political targets. In these terms, the ideas and strategies of urban sustainability adopted by eco-city developers are understood as reflections of broader policy priorities. The case study employed in this article, Masdar City, reveals how the Emirati eco-city initiative is the product of local agendas seeking economic growth via urbanisation to preserve the political institutions of Abu Dhabi. Following the economic imperatives set by the ruling class, the Masdar City project interprets sustainability as ecological modernisation and practices urban environmentalism almost exclusively in economic terms. The article shows how the developers of Masdar City capitalise on sustainability by building an urban platform to develop and commercialise clean-tech products, and concludes that the Emirati alleged eco-city is an example of urban eco-modernisation: a high-tech urban development informed by market analysis rather than ecological studies.

Across the Middle East, gated communities have become a defining feature of contemporary urban development, raising urgent questions about spatial inequality, public access, and social cohesion. This study examines the socio-spatial impacts of these developments by combining qualitative perceptions from regional expert interviews with in-depth analysis of two case studies in Jordan: Al Andalucía and Green Land. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with urban planners, architects, and policy experts from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the study employs thematic analysis to investigate expert perspectives on gated communities as a regional planning phenomenon. Findings reveal four dominant themes: (1) gated communities intensify spatial fragmentation and disconnection from surrounding urban fabric; (2) private sector dominance leads to unregulated, market-driven development that weakens strategic urban planning; (3) the erosion of inclusive public space and social cohesion is widely perceived as a social cost; and (4) gated living is framed as an aspirational lifestyle associated with security, prestige, and socio-economic distinction. The article concludes by calling for more inclusive urban policies that balance private development with inclusive planning strategies to mitigate the long-term impacts of fragmentation and exclusivity in Middle Eastern cities.

Urban resilience to natural disasters has constantly been a challenge to sustainable development in human societies. Since Iran is always exposed to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, it is necessary to address novel approaches to deal with these disasters. The use of urban land and its characteristics in each city is one of the most important indicators related to urban resilience. The Manba Ab neighborhood is one of the most disorderly neighborhoods in Ahvaz city. Considering human perspective (inappropriate social construction), natural (adjacent to the only fault of Ahvaz city and the presence of unevenness in the area), physical and the built environment (improper proportions of land uses and road network; the proximity to large-scale industrial land uses) the city has an unsustainable condition that makes the resilience improvements in the area inevitable. This research aims to assess the resilience of the Manba Ab neighborhood against one of the most critical disasters, namely earthquakes. The paper is an applied descriptive-analytical, and collected data are analyzed in the GIS using algorithms in the ANP model, and Super Decision software. Obtained results show that about 45% of the Manba Ab neighborhood have low resilience against earthquakes due to fine-grained fabrics, low width of the passages, unsuitable building skeleton, deficiency in urban green spaces, and deficiency in relief services land uses. In this regard, land use planning is an essential tool in promoting earthquake resilience in neighborhoods. Identifying vulnerable areas of neighborhoods and reducing factors of neighborhood vulnerability can be very effective in earthquake resilience.

This study is aimed at conducting a hazard-based sustainability gap analysis considering spatial threats driven by floods and landslides, that is, a multi-hazard-based prioritization of the most important cities in Gorganrood Basin, Iran. Two data-mining models were used to assess the spatial probability of flood inundation and landslide occurrence, namely, support vector machine with the radial basis function kernel (SVM-RBF) and maximum entropy (ME). As inputs, a total of 124 flooded locations and 346 landslides with ten flood/landslide predisposing factors were mapped using geoinformatics and organizational data. The random selection method was used to split the flood and landslide inventories into two sets of train and test data. Tolerance index was used to test the multicollinearity among predictors. Validation of the models was carried out using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC). Finally, TOPSIS was used, as a multi-criteria decision-making model, to make an internal sustainability gap analysis to prioritize the threatened and safe cities. For flood inundation, the AUC values obtained from the test set revealed that the SVM-RBF outperformed ME in terms of predictive power and generalization capacity with the respective areas of 0.831 and 0.796 under the curve. For landslide susceptibility assessment, SVM-RBF again excelled ME in predictive power with the respective values of 0.887 and 0.84. Therefore, the susceptibility maps derived from SVM-RBF, as the premier model, were used for the next stage. Extracting the flood and landslide spatial probability values to 14 city points, the TOPSIS-Solver software made a prioritization using the similarity function to the ideal solution. Accordingly, Aliabad, Minoodasht, and Azadshahr cities, with having the smallest similarity coefficients, were found to be the top three spatially threatened cities in Gorganrood Basin, while Aq Qala, Gomishan, and Gonbad-e Kavus cities were placed at the bottom as the safest cities. This study can be a pivotal point in regional risk-based planning, implementation of further pragmatic measures, and allocation of resources for improving sustainable development most wisely.

Increasing demand on infrastructures has led to increased attention to shallow soft ground tunneling methods in urbanized areas. Especially in metro tunnel excavations, it is important to control the surface settlements which are observed before and after excavation, which may cause damage to surface structures. Unlike motorway, sewage and other infrastructure tunnels, metro tunnels generally have to be excavated as twin tunnels and must have a larger diameter. Metro tunnels also have shallow depth. Due to their shallow depth, metro tunnels generally have been constructed in weak rocks or weak soils in cities. The construction of twin tunnels will generate ground movements which have the potential to cause damage to existing surface and subsurface structures. To solve this settlement problem, experts have used the Earth pressure balance machine (EPBM) and the slurry balance machine. In such excavations, especially in twin tunnels, the main challenges for constructers are estimating the maximum surface settlement, controlling the interaction of transverse surface settlement and shaping the settlement curve. Incorrect estimation of these parameters can lead to significant problems above the tunnels and in nearby structures. This paper focuses on surface settlement measurements, on the interaction of twin tunnel transverse surface settlement and on the relationship between shield parameters and transverse surface settlement for parallel tunnels using EPBM shields in clay and sand soils in shallow depth. Also, a new equation is proposed for estimating the transverse settlement curve of twin tunnels. The results from this proposed equation are compared with the results of field observations. The transverse settlement curve values obtained from the proposed equation have good agreement with the actual results for the Otogar–Kirazli metro case studies.

Much has been written about how information communication technologies (ICTs) detract from nations’ planning and development norms, but there remains insufficient theoretical examination of the way ICTs may drive extranormative national aims. This paper examines such a case by disentangling the complicated relationships between telecommunications, city planning, and economic development in one modern settler-colonial context. The author explores how planning and development norms are adulterated in Palestine-Israel to further a select set of interests, in the service of an evolving national project. Palestinian and Israeli demographics and telecommunications infrastructure on both sides of the Green Line are examined, revealing the role of these technologies in facilitating population dispersal, economic exploitation, and political control at various stages of settler colonialism.

Open dumping is the common procedure for final disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Iran. Several environmental pollution and soil degradation problems were found as a consequence of poor planning of landfills. So recognition of the MSW landfill state is required to prevent environmental problems. The objective of this research was to study the suitability of existing municipal landfill sites using geographic information system methods. Tonekabon city in the west area of Mazandaran province, northern Iran, along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, was chosen as a case study. In order to carry out this evaluation, two guidelines were used: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and regional screening guidelines. The results indicate that the landfills were not located in suitable sites and also that there are few suitable locations to install the landfills.

This book examines the destinations and sites that are being created for tourists, as well as for local people within an urban regeneration context, with a particular focus on tourism's relationship to urban regeneration and cultural development. It examines the impact of such developments on a local sense of place, heritage and identity. It examines how far, arts and artistic quality/integrity is compromised by being used as a tool for regeneration. It examines if global/local debates can be resolved within the context of regeneration, and how. These issues and others are exemplified using a number of international case studies in North and South America, as well as in Europe and the UK. Chapter 1 examines the issues and problems inherent in implementing urban regeneration projects and highlights the increasingly important role that culture and tourism play in the process. Chapter 2 examines the increasingly important role of creativity in urban regeneration. Chapter 3 examines the regeneration of new or less familiar areas of cities, and their development for tourism purposes. Chapter 4 examines mixed-use developments in city fringe areas, especially those with culturally diverse or ethnic populations. Chapter 5 examines the development of ethnoscapes or those areas of cities with a high concentration of ethnic minorities, and analyses the way in which multiculturalism has become an increasingly attractive selling point for city tourism. Chapter 6 examines some of the difficulties of interpreting and commemorating spaces of dissonant heritage in black heritage sites in New Jersey, USA. Chapter 7 examines the complexities that exist within large-scale, mixed-use development projects through the example of the newly developed Waterfront City of Odaiba in Tokyo, Japan. Chapter 8 examines the role of major sporting events in urban regeneration, tourism development, image enhancement and social inclusion. Chapter 9 examines the role of the Olympic Games in the regeneration of U.S. cities. Chapter 10 examines the role of the cultural industries in the regeneration of former industrial cities, focusing in particular on Lowell, Massachusetts in New England, USA. Chapter 11 examines how Chicago, a city in the USA that previously was dependent on the manufacturing industry, has sought to improve its economic position and raises its national and international profile via locally-driven strategies focused on facilitating the physical, economic and cultural restructuring of its downtown area. Chapter 12 examines the Avenue of the Arts in Philadelphia, USA, as an example of a project that has been largely successful due to charismatic leadership, dynamic fund-raising campaigns and coordinated public and private partnerships. Chapter 13 examines the problems and the potential benefits of waterfront developments in the context of regeneration. Chapter 14 examines the changing role of dockland cities and urban regeneration strategies, focusing in particular on case studies of Liverpool and Cardiff in the UK. Chapter 15 examines the use of interpretative planning in the context of Recife, Brazil. In conclusion, the richness, creativity, innovation and ambition of regeneration projects is indicated in a wide range of contexts. But cultural, tourism or urban development, cannot compensate for economic decline, environmental decay or social unrest. They can only alleviate some of the problems and tensions, and give new hope to cities. It would be misguided to suggest that there could be a 'checklist' for all cities hoping to embark on a 'successful' regeneration scheme, especially given that similar schemes can easily fail in different contexts. However, several factors seem to emerge as being rather critical to the future of regeneration. Whatever the context - be it Europe, the USA, Asia, Australasia - the issues and dilemmas surrounding cultural regeneration are broadly similar. Pessimists might conclude that regeneration is just another 'flash-in-the-pan' phenomenon that has helped to plug the gaps in economic and social decline. However, it is argued that within the academic/practitioner community, there is excitement, dynamism and great hope in the future for the phenomenon of regeneration.