Abeer Elshater

Ain Shams University · Urban Design

Many cities worldwide are losing their unique identities due to new urban and architectural developments. Heliopolis, a district in Egypt, is currently undergoing this transformation, particularly with the introduction of flyovers aimed at alleviating traffic congestion and improving traffic flow. While these developments enhance transportation eff...

This study addresses the challenge of creating agile, adaptable urban environments in the Global South, utilizing technology, innovation, and sustainability to respond to evolving challenges. Through a systematic review and content analysis of materials sourced from multiple databases, the research develops a replicable framework for cities to achi...

Purpose Neuro-urbanism is an emerging field focused on addressing global urban challenges by examining the impact of urban living on stress levels and mental well-being. The restorative environment approach has been widely applied to measure stress and mental health outcomes. Although there is a recognised relationship between neuro-urbanism and re...

The rapid advancement of wireless networking technology has fundamentally altered how people interact in public spaces, leading to concerns about its impact on social interactions. This research identifies factors that influence social interaction in public spaces due to the wireless networking technology by analysing responses from 333 participant...

This review article addresses the gap in the literature concerning the role of urban parks in providing cooling effects in hot and arid climatic zones. Using systematic review and content analysis of manuscripts from 1999 to 2023 in Scopus and Web of Science databases, elements and indicators of landscape architecture and their impacts on mitigatin...

Overview of Urban Design and Planning: current trends and progress Reflecting on recent developments within Urban Design and Planning, we are proud of the journal's latest achievements. The new Scimago rankings highlight our research's growing influence and scholarly contributions, reinforcing our commitment to advancing interdisciplinary discourse...

In the ever-evolving discourse of urbanism, particularly in architec ture, urban planning, and urban design disciplines, the proliferation of near-synonyms has become a critical focal point, deserving of scholarly attention. This linguistic phenomenon, while enriching in certain contexts, often leads to confusion and imprecision, ulti mately hin...

Critical to navigating research literature is ensuring the inclusion of relevant sources while filtering out irrelevant ones. Selecting suitable references demands careful attention and methodological rigor. This review article presents a systematic approach consisting of 11 sequential steps for constructing a reference list, ranging from broad ini...

Purpose This review article advocates for a holistic approach to interpreting and addressing urban poverty through the proposal of “poverty-free urbanism” (PFU). By introducing PFU as a holistic approach to measuring poverty from a deprivation perspective, this article confronts the multifaceted challenges of urban poverty, transcending mere materi...

This review article explores how metaphors and analogies used throughout urban history can simulate mental imagery to inspire innovation. The study addresses three critical questions using qualitative literature review methods like text data mining and content analysis. The results yielded from the first question showed a link between mental imager...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the utilisation of street food to redefine place management in public spaces in Egypt. The study examines the spatiotemporal effects of this approach, considering the preferences of both vendors and consumers alongside contextual design factors. Design/methodology/approach In this study, conducted in Cairo, E...

Purpose-Residing in a densely populated urban area possesses its allure; nonetheless, it can significantly impact physical and mental well-being owing to the persistent stress and information overload inherent in Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research The authors extend their gratitude to the editor and anonymous reviewers fo...

Pedestrianization is a significant discourse focus within urban planning and design research. However, the need for more clarity from the inconsistent use of near-synonym concepts or terms necessitates attention. This review article addresses this issue through a comprehensive analysis of synonym proliferation in pedestrian research, culminating in...

Urbanisation in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region has led to environmental challenges, particularly in urban form and its relationship with city structure. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) 11 and 13 have actions at the city level to address this issue. They highlight the significance of assessing neighbourhood...

This paper revisits the planning and design factors of “pedestrianized” and “walkable” urban streets to encourage physical activity, focusing on their prioritization according to public health and smart growth. The aim is to create a conceptual framework for urban planners and designers to encourage walking and reduce metabolic syndrome (MetS) risk...

Contemporary urban design, as well as sustainable development calls, pays serious attention to the notion of identity in the urban context. Furthermore, there is an increase in scientific research in this field. This paper revisits identifying place identity components. Therefore, reliable literature and research articles were reviewed to identify...

This paper reviews how excessive lighting in historical sites can negatively affect the enjoyment of social gatherings. Because light pollution has the potential to affect socialization negatively, we need the appropriate tools to handle these effects. As part of this research , three techniques were used to analyze these effects: a bibliographical...

The Editorial Board of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Urban Design and Planning is delighted to unveil the inaugural issue in 2024, dedicated to exploring the evolving topics of urban planning and design. This issue delves into challenges and opportunities through insightful research articles. At the heart of our editorial visi...

The “x-minute city” concept gained attention within the global urban discourse on post-pandemic cities. Recently, numerous cities have shifted their attention from considering the x-minute city merely as a theoretical concept to one with practical applicability, rediscovering the proximity dimension to be integrated into urban policies and plans. C...

Social interaction is a crucial aspect of social sustainability, aiming to improve quality of life. However, the emergence of gated communities in Egypt has shifted priorities, prioritizing isolation over social interaction. This paper examines the impact of social interaction in gated communities in the West of the Greater Cairo Region from a soci...

Purpose Research on green certificate rankings in the MENA region primarily focuses on building scale, relying on the certified project count. This assessment approach overlooks the spatial factor, failing to capture their influence on the urban built environment, thus potentially undermining other efforts not reflected by the project count. This r...

After the COVID-19 pandemic, human thoughts have changed in all fields worldwide. People started discovering different activities and realizing the essential role of urban spaces. Human needs and behavior changed through interaction with urban spaces. This article examines the importance of urban spaces in pandemics and how minor interventions can...

Purpose Sustainable development (SD) is vital in alleviating poverty, hunger and disease (PHD). The purpose of this study is to present a guiding framework with pathways targeting the sustainability challenges concerning PHD based on urban planning and design literature. Design/methodology/approach A narrative review and content analysis of 27 art...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to revisit the concepts of city singularity and identity, as well as the concept’s related topics (i.e. place identity, place attachment and place dependence). The aim is to investigate the impact of development projects on people's preferences for old and contemporary features in modern cities. The evidence f...

This study argues that Vision 2030 and social housing should consider the elements of the sociocultural dimension of urban design (SDUD) to alleviate urban poverty-induced feelings. By examining public spaces in the context of Vision 2030 and the implementation of social housing projects, this study aims to provide a theoretical framework that may...

Pedestrian scenarios refer to all types of transit, including unidirectional, bidirectional, and crossing actions. This study argues that pedestrian scenarios are critical normative factors that must be considered when implementing street changes in existent residential areas. It focuses on pedestrian safety and reliable access. Making improvements...

This study investigated literature-based similarities and differences between four interchangeably used concepts in spatial design and planning disciplines: personality, identity, character, and singularity. The methods used were a narrative literature review of monographs, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses of scholarly papers. The purpose of this...

Schools of upper secondary education play an essential role in the development of society. However, the city's architects focus on school buildings with less attention to the surrounding places. The public spaces attached to schools were not initially designed for pupils and resulted from their needs and activities. This paper focuses on the relati...

During the course of wars, the infrastructure of cities faces destruction. Fighting, regardless of its intentions, destroys roads, bridges, commercial and residential buildings, as well as the architecture they embody. Throughout history and around the globe, calls to stop wars have focused on the value of people's lives. In recent decades, there h...

“War: What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing” (Edwin Starr) During the course of wars, cities’ infrastructures mainly networks, roads, bridges, facilities, and homes, are exposed to destruction. Fighting, regardless of its inadvertence, destroys the structural assets of architecture and oftentimes leads to the erasure of urban artefacts. Against...

Several initiatives have taken part in the sustainability assessment tools, especially on the neighbourhood scale. These tools have been developed as neighbourhood sustainability assessment tools (NSATs) in global and local settings. Despite the widespread use of NSATs over the last two decades, research on NSATs in Global South cities is currently...

In some scientific journals, researchers have experienced ‘desk rejection’ of their manuscripts without them having been sent out for review. Although the research offered an innovative idea and good writing style, the decision was to ‘reject and resubmit.’ These two cases explain that the study lacked visionary research design, including unique me...

Several urban agendas related to different urban spaces in cities are documented in the global literature. This research explores social interactions in voids between buildings using tactical urbanism. As part of this study, we examine changes in perceptions of the use of spaces between buildings by comparing critical differentiation factors before...

This article discusses the crucial role of blogs in reporting topical materials yet to be adequately discussed in scholarly journals. A scoping study examined 31 samples from 4 types of blogging sources cited in 10 publications published in 7 journals in 2020. We identified four categories of blogs that include 39 community organisations, academics...

Losing one piece of the puzzle means failing to complete and see the original picture. That is what exactly happened in Heliopolis-Egypt and finding the reasons behind was the instigator of this study. This thesis explores some advantages and disadvantages of the latest urban design development and upgrading plan implemented in one of the famous he...

This study develops a replicable urban toolkit for decision-makers to improve the quality of life in Cairo for residents and visitors affected by traffic noise. Our case study in Cairo was selected using the Aviation Design Environmental Tool (AEDT) used worldwide for airports. To simulate the COVID-19 era and days after, the noise contour mapping...

The concepts of ‘city singularity’ and ‘smartness’ were utilised as a guide for writing this article, along with other elements, such as personality, identity, and character. We used a descriptive-analytical research methodology. According to our scoping review, urban form and everyday life have much in common. This study identified 13 factors in f...

There is little research-based evidence regarding the similarities and differences in urban plans and urban forms, regarding urban planning and design, between planned capital cities in Africa and Asia. In recognition of the establishment of planned capital cities on these continents, this article limited its case studies to six planned capital cit...

Choosing the proper research methods can pose a challenge for novice urban planners and designers. This study aimed to develop a more effective process for assisting urban planners and designers in selecting appropriate research techniques. The study used bibliometrics, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and storytelling techniques as examples of u...

This study tackles the design challenge of urban in fill development which arises from changes in the urban form and daily living experiences. Using the Web of Science to review relevant literature published over the last decade, we found a signi ficant gap in the study of in fill development: it overlooks liveability and conviviality. To fill this...

This editorial discusses smart cities and liveable cities in urban planning and design. Two urban scales of practices are involved in this work. First, the urban plans call for economic competitiveness and information technology development. The second is urban forms which involve the adaptation of place-making through liveability and quality of li...

In the field of urban studies, artificial intelligence technology offers potential applications. There are, however, limited sources on how technology can contribute to the study of user experiences in city contexts. This study examined the factors affecting user experiences around three exits of one of the Cairo Metro stops in Ramses Square in Cai...

The point of view expressed in this article is theoretically grounded in the PRISMA state-ment, which is a tool for critically evaluating academic papers in public health. Bibliometrics analysis, systematic review, meta-analysis, and storytelling techniques (BSMS) were used to identify relevant studies and create a process for documented urban plan...

Economic and urban planning research differ in determining the emergence of the informal economy. The literature describes the informal economy as the hidden economy in various terms. When it comes to the development of the informal sector, economic and urban planning studies are not on equal terms. It’s common to link the rise of the informal sect...

Blogs are a double-edged sword. These online essays can be produced by anyone with access to a computer and the internet. The writers could be well-informed experts with valuable insights to share, or official government agencies. Some bloggers are outstanding academic authors who have published their work in accessible databases, like Scopus, Web...

Global research extensively discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and thermal comfort in urban studies. The current research design uses Goodvision Video Insights as an application of AI to analyse users' preferences for movement within three exits/entrances of the metro stations in Ramses Square, Cairo, Egypt. This study uses AI technology to tra...

Global literature documents many urban agendas related to urban sprawl, traffic transit sequences, and flyovers. Changes in development patterns in Egypt have led to many lost spaces beneath flyovers, affecting the urban fabric. Despite these lost spaces under the flyovers, current Egyptian policies have transformed them into public spaces. This pa...

Scholarly studies have enriched the definition and theory of place identity since the 1960s. These trends are becoming more prevalent in the urban setting. This is because place identity has become a common theme in many researches and design projects and a thriving theme in policies and regulations to achieve sustainable development. In this respe...

In the past decades, protecting the urban environment in the face of environmentalism and environmental rights has become crucial to saving the planet from the dangers of the rapid urban development of new cities and societies. Air temperature is one of the factors influenced by climate change and contemporary city morphology that lacks compact cit...

The link of proposal submission is: https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/5426 This book focuses on the urban heat islands (UHI) phenomenon and five SDGs: Poverty (Goal 1) Public health and well-being (Goal 3) Decent work and economic growth (Goal 8) Sustainable cities and societies (Goal 11) Climate action (Goal 13) The...

Signs of interest in weather began in the second half of the nineteenth century, specifically between 1772 and 1864, in two volumes of the Englishman Luke Howard (2012) on meteorological observations in London. The impact of weather on agriculture and navigation was also studied. In the past decades, protecting the urban environment in the face of...

The United Nations (UN) has proposed two actions against climate change between 2015 and 2021: "combat" in Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and "adaptation" in the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (the Conference of the Parties COP 26). This chapter aims to highlight pathways and actions for addressing and adapting to climate ch...

This chapter examines a community developed in the early 20th century as a sustainable development paradigm. However, today saw the implementation of particular development plans in some cities in the global south that may not align with this community's long-term goals. Two Delphi rounds and an Envi-Met micro-climate simulation helped researchers...

Finding unfamiliar phrases and concepts that have not been used in a long time or are used in different professions with similar principles is one of the most challenging tasks for many urban planning and design academics. In two respects, this chal- lenge has become more complex. The first is that some research- ers wish to recover an unfamiliar t...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed how people can safely use public spaces, particularly in densely populated urban environments. This short commentary revealed the effects of people’s absence in public places due to the series of lockdowns or social distancing policies imposed due to the pandemic. The argument presented w...

This paper as a briefing explains the difference between 'city uniqueness' and 'city singularity' and emphasises how a city's notoriety promotes its unique characteristics in a deliberate direction towards the singularity. This viewpoint asserts that the significant urban forms are responsible for cities' uniqueness. In contrast, city singularity i...

This paper compares the perception of residents and pass-by users of lost spaces to extract the perceptual factors affecting these spaces. The aim is to demonstrate the need for examining livability for practical applications in the levels of regions, neighborhoods, and small areas. The findings discuss some definitions of the term “livability.” Th...

Hyper-diversity in old communities should be rehabilitated to address various man-made changes that threaten sustainability and viability at night. This study elucidates this argument by reviewing and synthesising theoretical and empirical evidence about urban governance support regarding the participation of neighbourhood residents to improve or e...

This study examines worker satisfaction vis-à-vis outdoor places in terms of their environmental and socio-morphological aspects. Numerous studies have considered decent work as the eighth goal of sustainable development. However, it is worth investigating outdoor workers' satisfaction with a view to the practical design of the surrounding context...

This review article examines the possibility of providing a toolkit to prepare habitats for free-roaming cats (FRCs) in public spaces. The toolkit targets local communities, authorities, stakeholders, and advocates in the cities of the Global South, to raise awareness and improve the welfare of FRCs living in urban communities. This article explore...

Schools of upper secondary education play an essential role in the development of society. However, the city architects focus on school buildings with less attention to the surrounding places. Public space was not initially designed for pupils and resulted from their needs and activities. This paper focuses on the relationship between the role of v...

Urban design and planning perspectives involve miscellaneous topics in the social sciences. However, plans involving cities, towns, and neighbourhoods continue to change and become more complicated, while the planning profession goes back to its roots by including people-centred development in the urban agenda. Now, do the latest urban paradigms in...

This study employed applied thematic analysis (ATA) and importance-performance analysis (IPA) to measure visitor satisfaction in city streets. Forty-two elements that significantly influence visitors' responses to streets and environments were included in five groups characterised by circumstances, characteristics, and indicators. Ibrahim Al-Lakani...

This article provides a systematic and critical review of urban paradigms that incorporate economic and cultural diversity, information technology, and competitiveness considering the SDG 11. It explores the possibility of discussing future research using sets of research topics and words of coexistence predefined in urban planning and design liter...

Children are the eventual future of the city. Children who grow up feeling truly at home here as secure, energetic, engaged citizens will be grown-ups who add to making an incredible city for the age to come. Children are additionally among our most powerless natives, and their hardships or prosperity is the best pointers of what our city resembles...

Abstract Purpose–Over the coming decades, the widespread application of social distancing creates challenges for theurban planning and design profession. This article aims to address the phenomenon of boredom in publicplaces, its main influences that generate change in repetition, monotony and everyday lifestyle, whetherpositive, negative or both–d...

Many studies have been conducted over the last 20 years to determine and measure factors that affect the walkability of city streets. Walkability is an essential factor in deciding whether a city is green or sustainable. This paper creates a comprehensive walkability index by analysing built environmental indicators that affect walkability. This re...

The idea of this book originated in the 4th International Conference of Contemporary Affairs in Architecture and Urbanism ICCAUA2021, held online in Alanya Hamdullah Emin Pasa University in May 2021. It was conceived as an intellectual discourse and a concise compendium of recent research in two parts, first part comprises Architecture and Urban st...

Globally, there is a rapid development of urban heat island (UHI) detection tools, and their results can be accepted regardless of their accuracy in measuring the real impact of the phenomenon. In this study, we investigated various UHI measuring tools and analysed their findings to better interpret their reliability. The tools in the current resea...

Global research in landscape architecture demonstrates the perceived safety in parks. This article used Al-Azhar Park, Cairo, Egypt, as a case study to determine the type of prospect that most promotes users' perception of safety. Given that prospects-refuge makes perceived safety perform better, this research focuses on 20 types of prospects conce...

Monitoring the changes in people's presences in public spcaes can play a vital role in enhancing place-making research. This study investigated Herrengasse Street in Graz, Austria, and Oxford Street in London, the UK, using a systematic review, real scene interpretations, and expert advice to check the casual and deductive arguments. A six-step con...

In the 1950s, Frank Sinatra described New York City in his song ‘New York, New York’ as ‘the city that never sleeps’ (JJ Leppard -MasTA, 2010). Today, there are few cities that never sleep (Mayor of London, 2018; Sonnega, Sonnega, & Kruger, 2019). Today, New York and Cairo are ranked first and second respectively as 24-hour cities, while Paris rank...

This chapter explores the random configurations of lighting elements of billboards and outdoor screens in historical public spaces. This chapter built a theoretical base on a systematic review of research indexed in Web of Science (WOS) as hot topics and highly cited in the field published in the last five years. Reflecting on the case of Old Cairo...

Every smart city has digital technology, but not every city has a digital technology called ‘smart’. This chapter focuses on the impact of digital technologies on nightlife in public spaces. The literature describes the third place as a dramatic zone of situations that articulate current events, referring to the urban nightlife atmosphere as a type...

This book investigates urban nightlife transformations and the challenge of enhancing the sense of belonging in sensitive areas like local communities and historical sites and offers new insights into controlling the chaotic intervention of traditional or digital technology, whether from citizens themselves or local authorities"-Provided by publish...

Should smart city applications reconsider the principles of placemaking in confronting the resemblance of smart cities? This systematic review seeks to answer this question by offering a framework that elucidates the principles of placemaking in smart cities and the relationship between people and places. The results of reviewing the SciVal and SCI...

This article investigates the predicament of the presence of internally displaced persons (IDPs) near sites that have significant historical value. Particularly at the Aqueduct of Cairo, Egypt, established in AD 1176, this scene materializes as a result of facultative choices of IDPs or a group that decision-makers have forcibly displaced to save l...

This chapter addresses “new methods” to display research problems which are strongly linked with the issue of urban emotions. It focuses on how to use these methods in urban design, based on the dominant science and new analytical approaches, such as “virtual world design,” “spatial planning,” “geoinformatics,” “urban sensing,” and “a three-dimensi...

This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for exploring the quality of affective atmospheres relevant to urban situations in city centre streets. This research study assumes that urban situations can shed light on how the urban form and everyday life experiences impact affective atmospheres. To examine this assumption, a snowballing techni...

The difference in the political leanings, ethnic diversity or religious beliefs between the nations leads to armed conflicts. Cities become subject to total or partial destruction, physically, socially and economically. The number of displaced people witnessed a significant increase in the last few years, with several ongoing conflicts across the w...

In using the assemblage theory, this article focuses on the concepts of ''city singularity" and ''urban atmo-spheres" in designing better places for children. A literature review revealed a theoretical framework aiming at a possible relationship between singularity, urban atmospheres, and assemblage thinking. A retrospective survey launched among p...

Urbanisation is a process associated with the global industrial and technological development. Globally, this process causes a continuous change of the land cover and increases the urban areas. Scholars from various disciplines address these changes that affect the global climatic system, microclimate and the environment. Urban heat island (UHI) is...