Azza Kamal

University of Florida | UF · Department of Urban and Regional Planning

World urban population continues to grow compared to rural population. Since 1950, where only 30% of the world’s population (a 746 million) was urban, urban population has grown to 54.5% in 2014, where 3.9 billion lived in urban areas. According to The United Nations (2016), population will continue to grow by 2030, where it is projected that 60% o...

The neighborhood planning and street design are two major contributors to the physical environment's implications on safety measures. Natural surveillance, including glazing, lighting, and positioning of non-private areas and access paths inside and outside of buildings, has been studied ever since Oscar Newman and Jane Jacobs writings on successfu...

Very limited studies have examined infill development in the context of suburban areas or small towns, and only a few studies have broadly analyzed the parcels potential for infill in the inner city context. This paper develops a quantitative and visual model with a ranking system for infill developable sites using geographic information systems (G...

The Edwards Aquifer ecosystem is the only source of drinking water for millions of people in the US Central Texas Region. Approximately 15% of the Stormwater Pollution Prevention Engineering Structures, known as Best Management Practices (BMP), are not functioning sufficiently to prevent non-point source pollution from stormwater infiltration in th...

Conference Presentation

The city of San Antonio, Texas still retains a bold imprint of the Spanish colonial intervention, with the core of the city demarcated by a series of linear irrigation channels begun to be built around 1718, known as acequias.

In 2010, Chicanos Por La Causa, Inc. [CPLC], a multistate community development corporation leading a national consortium of 15 nonprofit affordable housing developers, received $137 million from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under Neighborhood Stabilization Program [NSP-2]. As one of the largest federal grants that...

Support for a research-driven design/build studio has been adopted by a growing number of schools of architecture in the US and Europe. Most of these schools regard design/build programs as a continuous dialogue between practice and scholarship of design. This paper analyzes students' attained-skills through exploring the educational tools integrat...

Geographic Information System (GIS) is increasingly being used by local governments and planning agencies as a type of support tool. Recently, different non-profit housing organizations, in addition to rural counties in the USA, embarked on integrating GIS in their processes for administering large amounts of data for sustainable planning decision...

Faced with a large amount of data, obtaining useful information and providing effective support for urban planning is a new and increasingly difficult challenge. The effectiveness of planning decisions can be greatly enhanced by providing planning professionals, policy makers, and other stakeholders with methods and tools to evaluate the different...

The San Antonio RiverWalk is an exquisite and dynamic destination for tourists from Texas, as well as from other states in the US. Because of its location in downtown area, the entire area including the RiverWalk, has been incorporated into various guides and maps, all of which seem to be disregarding the interrelationship between the RiverWalk lev...

Informal settlements are a form of housing found in many parts of the world. Self-help housing in informal settlements has different influences that are denoted in the customs and preferences of the residents, which in turn, are reflected on the elements of house exteriors as well as its interior. Colonias in the U.S-Mexico border region are a mode...

Poster Presentation

Poster Presentation