The research performed attempts to answer the question of how building integration of active solar systems may affect the thermal comfort in open areas and the interstitial space between buildings in urban environments. This is done by using computer simulation and in-situ observations at the extreme northern and southern geographies of Europe, namely in Luleå, Sweden and in Limassol, Cyprus. A typical example of the urban grid of each city is chosen and active solar systems are integrated on the facades of buildings, respectively foreach case. The thermal conditions at street level are then simulated, using Envi-MET, before and after systems integration, with the aim of assessing the differences between low and high insolation conditions, using the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) indicator. Subsequently, the thermal conditions in the public space between buildings were once again assessed, with reduced emissivity values for the building integrated PV panels. The results point to the fact that the building integration of PVs lacking low emissivity coatings can have an impact in the thermal comfort of users in the locations specified, especially in the summer, wherein it is shown to be negligible in the southern case study but more significant in the northern one.

Landslides represent a significant hazard affecting human life and property and threaten the sustainability of human settlements. They are among the most critical threats after earthquakes in Turkey. In 2020, 107 landslide events occurred in Turkey. Implementing proper policies, strategies, and tools for landslide risk mitigation remains challenging for urban planning institutions. In the plan preparation phase, urban planners and plan-making authorities, agencies, or institutions may overlook landslide risks due to a lack of data or related studies. Therefore, this article aims to develop a novel spatial analysis for identifying landslide-prone areas at the provincial level from an urban planning perspective. The analysis is compared to the approved upper-scale plan, and the results are used to build a more robust understanding of landslide risks for sustainable urban development. Isparta Province is selected as the study area, as it has active landslide areas. The methods used include a literature survey including internet sources, newspapers, plans, articles, and other research projects and a case study utilizing a GIS spatial analysis. The spatial analysis using GIS is based on three landslide inventories currently available in Turkey. This spatial analysis is developed to determine landslide-prone regions by considering thematic layers, triggering factors, and vulnerability inputs. As a result of this analysis, five landslide-prone areas in Isparta Province are determined. When these regions are compared to the upper-scale plan that covers the province, it is found that land use and planning decisions have neglected landslide risks, and urban areas are at high landslide risk. Several specific principles and strategies, such as a spatial inventory database and an integrated planning approach including landslide-prone areas, are stated with a reliable spatial analysis to assess landslide-prone areas on a regional scale, which can be applied later in any city and region of Turkey.

In the last decades, contemporary urbanism in the global South has meant large urban transformations, tall architecture landmarks, and fierce city competition. However, cities and their planners are now confronting an ethical dilemma: how to grow and compete while caring for the disastrous impacts on Earth and human health caused by the mass extraction, processing, and consumption of resources linked to urbanization. In our article, we problematize the modern interpretation of technology, and in particular architecture and planning technologies, in society where sustainability is considered a product. By restudying the Quranic notion of the khalifa and the accidental, ecological formation of the oasis, we will argue for a postpromethean philosophy of inhabiting the Earth. We will exemplify this new ethical–technological shift by comparing planned and unplanned developments in Arabian Gulf cities. 

In this article, we problematize the implementation of smart urban experiments in the resource-rich, Arctic periphery. Our case study is the so-called Norrbotten Technological Megasystem in Sweden, with a specific focus on the mining towns of Malmberget/Gällivare and Kiruna. Kiruna in particular is a well know case study as its urban centre is being relocated due to subsidence caused by underground mining. The new town centre is being developed as a testbed for smart urbanism. We argue that if we look at the nexus between resource extraction and urbanization in Kiruna and Malmberget, we find smart city thinking more aligned to the bottom line of the resource extraction industry rather than being an innovative project to make economic development compatible with broader climate and societal challenges. Methodologically, we use historic analysis and assemblage thinking to look at the territorialization and de-territorialization of resource-extraction in Norrbotten over the last 100 years.

Addressing the complex interrelationships between city making and the resources needed for its production, Predatory Urbanism explores the link between urbanization and resources in the global South. It particularly focuses on urban megaprojects, highlighting these planned developments and re-developments carried out by the state or state-linked agencies. 

The aim of this article is to critically situate co-production methods such as that of the urban living lab within contemporary planning theory and in particular to the ideas of ‘agonistic planning’ and the ‘trading zone’. By critically review relevant literature and discussing the results of an ongoing interdisciplinary project, we will show a number of potentials and issues when translating the urban living lab idea to planning contexts. Potentially our urban living labs have opened up opportunities for local planners to discuss controversial issues by using the idea of nature based solution as a boundary-object/trading-zone. On the other hand, planners’ positivistic and incremental understanding of city making hinders a transformative understanding of the urban living lab and nature based solution in favour of more fashionable technological fixes. 

In this chapter, we focus on urban space that emerges from transnational social practices related to knowledge megaprojects (Qatar) and cross-border economic integration (Johor in Malaysia). We look at two case studies with two complementary perspectives: that of the space of flows and Metapolis; and that of the transit space. What emerges from this double reading of the global city in Asia is the significance of landscape and social displacements processes. The conclusions point to the importance of understanding sustainability from an inclusive, social perspective by tapping on local expertise and knowledge. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The emergence of the climate change discourse in urban planning emphasises resilience as a key concept to deal with issues such as climate mitigation and adaptation, and urban health. What we have termed in this article ‘green resilience’, the coalescence of technological solutions and resilience thinking to solve cities’ ecological issues, is constantly gaining traction in urban planning research. However, green resilience often fails to take into account the socio-political and spatial processes that pertain to the exploitation of land for urban development particularly in the global South. Based on our latest research on two urban megaprojects, in Johor-Singapore (Malaysia) and Doha (Qatar), in this article we build a critique of green resilience and urbanism by leveraging research in the fields of environmental humanities and urban planning.

For decades, alternative (to carbon) sources of energy in Sweden have been linked to hydro- and nuclear power. However, this is set to change as the Swedish government’s agenda has placed extraordinary emphasis on renewables. The implementation of renewables in Sweden poses several challenges. Literature shows that two main aspects deter local communities from embracing large renewable projects: lack of acceptance (of the impacts) and lack of participation (in the making and benefits). Sweden has a long tradition of stakeholder engagement in state-funded projects in the form of participatory meetings and written feedbacks. However, other participatory techniques are less established. Since 2014, we have engaged in research projects dealing with energy landscapes, design thinking, and what we have recently named “resourceful communities”. The aim of this chapter is to report on the results of our recent projects that engage with the above-mentioned concepts/strategies to foster collaboration and understanding between end-users and other stakeholders.

During the fall of 2018, a two-day seminar in Lulea, Sweden, gathered an interdisciplinary group of researchers to reflect on the socio-urban and political processes of resource extraction and urbanization in the global periphery. Cases from the Arctic region and South America were discussed from the point of view of law, history and technology, planning, and urban economics to explore the multiple conflicts arising from resource-based development in sparsely populated areas. From this perspective, we present here the cases of Kiruna, Sweden, and Calama, Chile, to highlight the need to expand urban and landscape research into the nexus between resources and urbanization.

 This article—framed as a methodological contribution and at the intersection between the critical urban, urban political ecology and world-ecology disciplines—builds on Corboz’s metaphor of ‘territory as a palimpsest’ to explore the representation of the socio-economic and ecological processes underpinning uneven development under extractive capitalist urbanization. While the palimpsest approach has typically been used to map transformations of more traditional urban morphologies, this work focuses instead on remote extraction territories appropriated by the global economy and integral to planetary urbanization. The article suggests the central notion of ‘palimpsests of appropriation’ as a lens to map the extraction processes. It does so in its multi-scalar and temporal dimensions and on the basis of the three intertwined frames—i.e., the productive, distribution and mediation palimpsest—shortly exemplifying its use on the ground for the iron ore extraction territory in the Swedish-Norwegian Arctic. With this, the article contributes to the development of an expanded representational methodology and conception of territories of extraction—where social and natural production are brought together—illustrating how appropriation has been (re)shaping each of the frames throughout historical thresholds, but also how socio-natures are being (re)made in its image.

Like any other emirate of the Persian Gulf, Qatar has invested billions of dollars to implement ambitious urban transformations. The official aim of these ‘megaprojects’ is to diversify the economy away from oil revenues, by attracting investors, tourists and knowledge workers. However, so far these megaprojects have broadly failed to deliver on this aim. In this chapter, I focus on the ‘state-planning nexus’ to show that despite the unique absolute control that the government has of all the phases needed to deliver a project, from planning to financing, the results have been poor. Megaprojects are disconnected from each other and their surroundings, they reinforce segregation and do not fit within the country’s ecological boundaries (lack of water, high temperatures and so forth). I argue that the lack of understanding of Gulf dynamics by international consultants, poor government capacity and ecological predatory strategies are the underlying causes for Qatar’s megaprojects fiasco.

The linear pattern of production-consumption-disposal of cities around the world will continue to increase the emission of pollutants and stocks of waste, as well as to impact on the irreversible deterioration of non-renewable stocks of raw materials. A transition towards a circular pattern proposed by the concept of 'Circular Cities' is gaining momentum. As part of this urban transition, the emergent use of Nature-based Solutions (NBS) intends to shift public opinion and utilize technology to mitigate the urban environmental impact. In this paper, an analysis of the current research and practical investments for implementing NBS under the umbrella of Circular Cities is conducted. A combined appraisal of the latest literature and a survey of ongoing and completed National-European research and development projects provides an overview of the current enabling tools, methodologies, and initiatives for public engagement. It also identifies and describes the links between facilitators and barriers with respect to existing policies and regulations, public awareness and engagement, and scientific and technological instruments. The paper concludes introducing the most promising methods, physical and digital technologies that may lead the way to Sustainable Circular Cities. The results of this research provide useful insight for citizens, scientists, practitioners, investors, policy makers, and strategists to channel efforts on switching from a linear to a circular thinking for the future of cities.

The energy performance of heritage buildings is attracting growing interest in research and practice. Accordingly, as shown by our literature review, increasing numbers of articles on energy-efficiency measures for heritage buildings are being published in peer-reviewed journals. However, there is no overview of how energy efficiency and heritage conservation have been approached in the studies. To address this gap we categorized and assessed the identified studies in terms of two key elements of such investigations: energy analysis and analysis of cultural heritage values. Most of the studies evaluate and propose measures to reduce the operational energy use of single heritage buildings, and fewer have applied a broader system perspective. Moreover, the underlying notion of the buildings’ cultural heritage values seems to have been derived mainly from international conventions and agreements, while potentially significant architectural, cultural and historical factors have been rarely discussed. Our findings highlight that, when considering energy improvements, cultural heritage values should be more explicitly articulated and analysed in relation to established conservation principles or methodologies. Besides further scientific study, this point to the need of designing best-practice approaches that allow transparency and knowledge sharing about the complex relationships between energy efficiency and heritage conservation of buildings.

In this paper, we outline a framework to study what we have termed "Predatory Cities", using the artificial offshore island of The Pearl in Qatar as a case study. By focusing on the nexus between urbanisation and resources, we will argue that the master-planning of new cities in the booming global South implies both the access and cheap exploitation of a set of, on the one hand, intangible and, on the other hand, tangible resources that exceed the traditional boundaries. Our point of departure is that the cheap appropriation and exploitation of alien architecture images and resource networks for the making of new, master-planned cities has become a necessary, but highly unsustainable, strategy to survive an increasingly competitive global offering of new destinations.

This study explores connectivity for soft mobility in the winter season. Working with residents from the sub-arctic city of Luleå, Sweden, the research examines how the interaction between the built environment and winter season affects people’s use of the outdoor environment. The research questions for this study are, 1) how do residents perceive the effects of winter on an areas spatial structure and pattern of streets and pathways? and 2) what enablers and barriers impact resident soft mobility choices and use of the public realm in winter? Methods used were mental mapping and photo elicitation exercises. These were used to gain a better understanding of people’s perception of soft mobility in winter. The results were analysed to identify how soft mobility is influenced by the winter season. The discussion highlights that at the neighbourhood scale, residents perceive that the winter alters an areas spatial structure and pattern of streets and pathways. It was also seen to reduce ease of understanding of the public realm and townscape. In conclusion, it is argued that new and re-tooled town planning strategies, such as extending blue/ green infrastructure planning to include white space could help better enable all year outdoor activity in winter cities.

The aim of this project was to explore the possibility to smartly integrate food production in cold urban environments. The main objective was to sketch an intelligent platform to guide a comprehensive, city-wide approach to urban farming in winter cities and assist city stakeholder.

We have worked with large databases related to energy consumptions, performances, building stock and size, solar radiation, and so forth. The challenge for us was to integrate big data in a manner that is easy to understand and visualize for all audiences while matching the ambitions of local stakeholders for urban farming.

Urban farming (UF) has social, economic, and environmental benefits: socially UF will bring people closer to nature and it can become a source of education for local schools and community; economically, UF targets the rapidly growing market of premium, fresh, biological food that is proudly produced locally and can be sold to local restaurants and other customers; environmentally, UF will decrease our reliance from far away and poorly controlled food chains, while decreasing environmental costs for transportation.

Interest in climate-sensitive urban design has grown in recent decades. Nevertheless, there are various difficulties associated with such an approach. One of these is the lack of simple comfort assessment tools. This paper presents a method for microclimate assessment that is composed of a wind comfort analysis and a microclimate assessment based on measuring a combination of solar access and wind velocity. The study includes analysis of a proposed urban project situated in Kiruna, a Swedish town located in the subarctic region of the country. The results from the simulations were then overlaid to produce combined microclimate maps for three specific dates: winter solstice, spring equinox and summer solstice. The maps illustrate relative microclimate differences between areas in the proposed project based on combinations of wind/lee and sun/shadow conditions. The outcomes showed that only a small proportion of the area studied had favourable microclimate conditions at the winter solstice and spring equinox. The thermal comfort Index OUT_SET* was calculated for the summer solstice in the study area. Comparisons between the spatial distribution of OUT_SET* values and the microclimate assessment map showed a large degree of correlation. The method is intended to be a simple and representative evaluation of microclimate.

Resources in their various forms are at the basis of our urban economies. The extraction, alongside with the distribution, processing and disposal, of resources, being them natural, energy, or human, is a main driver for planetary urbanization. However, under a market-led economic regime, which is characterized by boom and bust cycles, the space produced by the resource-extraction economic model is from time to time discarded with huge environmental and social losses world wide. While recent concerns about climate change and urban resilience have emphasized resource efficiency i.e. consume less and use better each unit of resource, we think that this target alone isn't sufficient to truly transform society towards a more resilient horizon. We need to rethink the resource-urbanization nexus (RUN) and the way it affects our lifestyle and cities. In this article, we suggest resources in its various forms (natural and human) be intimately integrated with humanity and its built environment. To articulate such a vision, we discuss our two latest research projects that deal respectively with energy districts and resource regions in northern Sweden. Methodologically, we deploy assemblage thinking, global production network of resources, and critical urban theory and political ecology as the main pillars of our framework.

This study explores winter settlement urban design principles to begin to identify climate related conditions that are affecting soft mobility (walking and cycling) in these communities.

Winter communities have evolved lifestyles and means that fit with working and living with local conditions and seasonal variations. With climate change, however, comes evolving weather’s that these communities need to adapt too. These changes may present new risks and unexpected challenges to outdoor soft mobility in the community.

Public policy highlights physical inactivity as a major health concern. For these communities, winter has always limited outdoor soft-mobility. Here, we understand that in winter outdoor activity can be reduced by weather and fear of accidents.

People’s understanding of the barriers and enablers to soft mobility are also often based on experience and ability to detect environmental clues. To help winter communities maximise the opportunities for outdoor soft mobility and the wellbeing benefits this can bring, built environments need to be designed with an understanding of climate change. 

This study explores barriers and enablers to soft mobility in winter and discusses them in light of climate change and human wellbeing. It is argued that established principles of urban design may require re-evaluation if we want to increase outdoor soft mobility in winter. Increases in physical activity could help reduce costs and pressures on health services by creating safer and more walkable communities. The paper concludes by suggesting that communities should focus on more context based winter urban design principles that account for ongoing climate change.

Urban form can moderate the effects of weather on human movement. As such, the interrelationship between built environment, weather and human movement is a critical component of urban design. This paper explores the impacts of weather on non-motorised human movement (soft-mobility). Throughout we look at soft-mobility from the citizen’s perspective and highlight the barriers to soft-mobility in winter.

The aim of this study was to test the traditional pallet of winter city urban design considerations. Those of solar-access, wind and snow management and explore other weather and terrain conditions that act as barriers to soft-mobility in winter. This study is based on survey responses from 344 citizens in the sub-arctic area of Sweden. Outcomes from the research highlight that rain, icy surfaces and darkness are today’s most significant barriers to soft-mobility in winter.

Results from this study link changing barriers to soft-mobility in winter with climate change. The paper concludes that future urban design and planning for winter cities needs to consider a wider pallet of weather conditions, especially rain.

The “Green” rhetoric is constantly gaining traction in urban planning research. In line with anthropocenic thinking, the study of green cities and infrastructures has promised a straightforward recipe to solve many urban issues (e.g., climate mitigation and resilience, urban health, etc.). However, green city/infrastructure proponents, while emphasizing the positive environmental, economic, and health aspects of these projects, often neglect important socio-political and spatial considerations that are crucial for understanding the dramatic transformation of non-urbanized and peri-urban territories. Based on my latest research on urban megaprojects in Johor, Malaysia, and Doha, Qatar, in this paper I will critically re-discuss the green city/infrastructure idea by analyzing megaprojects’ biogeophysical and social displacements in peri-urban territories in the global South.

The aim of this paper is to assess Malta’s government capacity to manage the possible environmental and social conflicts arising from the implementation of its renewable energy agenda to comply with EU’s 2020 energy package. The country has targeted photovoltaic technologies to achieve a 10% of renewable energy share in the final consumption of energy by 2020. Malta is a popular tourist destination, it hosts three UNESCO world heritage sites, and it is one of the smallest, although densely populated, countries in the European Union. From the encroachment of PV parks with the existing urban/rural landscape, we found a number of issues worth to be investigated such as the location of solar power plants, participatory planning mechanisms, and aesthetic-design considerations for integrating photovoltaic into the existing urban fabric. The study is based on exploratory interviews with institutional stakeholders and document analysis.

Natural resources (minerals, petrol, wind, solar, forest, etc.) are at the basis of our urban economies. However, under a market-led economic regime, resource-extraction urbanism is a waste-generating, primitive (although pervasive) model that evolves at the planetary scale. At the same time, trends such as decentralization and miniaturization of renewable resource generation and circular economies promise to disrupt the current resource-extraction paradigm. We think that cities need to transition from the primitive, resource-extraction paradigm to a more resilient, resource-integrate urban nexus. In my presentation, I will show some experiences in which, under the umbrella of resource-integrated urbanism, my group and I have dealt with the issues of exploring a new urban aesthetic and the regeneration of resource-extraction spaces. The first project, in the project Food on the Roof, we deploy big data analysis techniques and interdisciplinary thinking to capitalize on waste energy and available space to grow food in cities across seasons. In the second project, MIN-SPIRE, we tackle the issue of extractive spaces and “resource waste” by deploying design and planning as a catalyst for local development.

In the last two decades, resource cities of the Arab Gulf Region have been known to urban scholars and the general public for their extravagant, large-scale urban developments. These so-called megaprojects have allowed Gulf governments to both brand their nations globally and compete regionally and internationally with other global economic centers. However, as oil-rich Gulf countries have attempted to diversify their revenue stream away from fossil fuels, a new urban typology has emerged in their capitals to facilitate the transition to the knowledge-intensive economy. In continuity with previous research on megaprojects in the Gulf and Asian countries, we have called this new typology Knowledge Megaprojects (KMs). In this paper, by using as a reference point for comparisons the existing literature on knowledge developments in the West, we set to exemplify KMs in the Gulf region by analyzing the case of Education City—a large knowledge campus being developed by the Qatari government in Doha. One main result of this study is that KMs replicate the same shortcomings of other more mundane, extravagant megaprojects and thus are unlikely to provide the right urban setting to foster a sustainable transition to the post-carbon economy in the Gulf.

As metropolitan areas around the world keep expanding, behind them, rural areas continue to be affected by greater rates of depopulation. This is not a new phenomenon: rural to urban migration has been reported in the developed world at least from the period between the two world wars. However, recent rural depopulation trends have dramatically intensified in both the developed and the developing countries worldwide. In planning literature, greater emphasis is placed on the “urban–rural” divide, that is, people leaving the countryside to look for better opportunities in urban areas. However, a growing body of literature points to the fact that not all rural areas are declining at the same rate. Indeed, some rural towns have managed to retain population and even to grow. Therefore, at least in developed countries, an “intra-rural” divide notion is emerging. To exemplify this notion, we have studied rural towns in Southern Italy.

Over the last decade, governments of the small Arab emirates in the Gulf region have invested billions of dollars in an attempt to foster rapid growth in their capital cities: the results have been truly dramatic and many of the urban centres in the region have been physically transformed. One interesting aspect of this growth is the fact that rhetoric about sustainability has apparently gained traction in the region, as evidenced by a plethora of urban megaprojects that are all carefully branded as green and sustainable. Urban developments in the Gulf have stimulated a spate of scholarly literature in a number of disciplines, and the debates are ongoing; this article will contribute to the discussion in several ways. It begins with a description of recent economic developments in the Gulf, and goes on to explore and expand the modern phenomenon of ‘instant urbanism’ as it applies to the region. We then compare two notable megaprojects in Doha and one in Abu Dhabi, closely analysing the rhetoric of sustainable urban development that surrounds each. We show the limitations of this rhetoric and uncover the covert aims of these projects, and suggest some of their unintended outcomes

For decades alternative (to carbon) sources of energy in Sweden have been linked to hydro- and nuclear-power. However, this is set to change as the new Swedish government agenda has put an extraordinary emphasis on renewables. The implementation of renewables in Sweden poses several challenges. Three main aspects deter local communities from embracing large renewable projects: Noise, the visual impact, and visual discomfort (reflection). Sweden has a long tradition of stakeholder engagement in state-funded projects in the form of participatory meetings and written feedbacks. However, other participatory techniques are less established. Since 2014, LTU has been engaged in a research project dealing with energy, landscape, art, and participation in LTU campus in Piteå, Norrbotten. The aim of this paper is to discuss this interdisciplinary project and report its results. The main finding of this research is that the use of particpatory design in energy projects such as a smart campus is an important factor to foster collaboration and understanding between end users and stakeholders.

The decreasing pace of urban development in economically-troubled Europe allows time for urban practitioners and actors to re-think planning action and its outcomes. In Canada where urban development seems unstoppable, contemplative breaks are as important. From the rubbles of recent environmental and economic crises around the world, in this article we discuss the emergence of a new theoretical approach in urban design and planning that is at the intersection of Socio-Spatial Research, Complexity Theories of Cities, and Urban Activism: Transdisciplinary Urbanism. We deploy three relevant, research projects we have been engaged with to analyze issues, challenges and limitations of Transdisciplinary Urbanism. The time frame of these interventions spans almost a decade.

In the last 20 years urban development in the Arab Gulf Region has boomed as the combined result of increased oil revenues, diversification of the local economy away from oil and its byproducts, increased immigration flows, and geopolitical transformations (Al Buainain, 1999; Bagaeen, 2007; Elsheshtawy, 2008; Rizzo, 2013). Gulf governments and their agencies - along with members of the ruling families who sit at the same time in ministries and in boards of private companies (Ponzini, 2011) - have been the main players to fund and implement urban mega-projects - i.e. large, themed urban-developments (Rizzo, 2013).Furthermore, in the last ten years there has been a clear tendency in the Gulf Region to build offshore, sea-reclaimed mega-projects (Koolhaas et al., 2007). Amongst the small, rich Arab states of the Gulf, Dubai has been the first and the boldest emirate to implement sea-megaprojects - e.g. Jumeirah’s and Jebel Ali’s Palms, World Archipelago, etc. (Pacione, 2005; Ouis, 2011). Recently, Dubai’s approach to urban development has been exported to several other countries within and beyond the Gulf Region; Elsheshtawy (2010) has labeled this trend/phenomenon “Dubaisation”.In this paper we present the biggest, sea-reclaimed urban project in Qatar (i.e. The Pearl Island) to analyse politics and processes of mega water-developments in the Arab Gulf Region. Also, in our study, we briefly touch on the socio-economic (exclusion/segregation) impacts/sustainability of this sea-megaproject on Doha, Qatar’s capital city.

In this article we review past and current master planning efforts in Qatar, highlighting the country's inability to manage rapid urban development. We will argue that the failure to implement sound urban planning in Qatar - and by extension, in the rest of the Arab Gulf Region - is the result of a detachment between the master planning phase - usually sub-contracted to external consultants that are insensitive to Gulf dynamics - and the implementation phase - usually carried out by incapable and redundant local government agencies - all in absence of a serious discussion of ongoing mega-projects.

Doha, capital city of the Arab emirate of Qatar, has grown from a small, port city to a bustling capital region with global ambitions. Today almost 85% of Qatar’s total population (1.4 out of 1.7 million inhabitants) live in metropolitan Doha, while before 1971 (pre-independence) its total population was 30 times less. Blessed with generous oil and particularly gas reserves, since the 1970s the country has undertaken urban mega-projects and expensive land reclamations which have increased the built up area in the capital region by 60 times. In this article we review Doha’s past and current urban development, highlighting Qatar’s different urban phases. Also, by comparing Doha to Dubai, we investigate the impacts of Qatar’s ‘‘mega-projects agenda’’ on two important government-led developments: Education City and Mshereib Redevelopment.