Architecture Research Staff

• Dr. Husam AlWaer (Architecture)
• Dr. Deepak Gopinath (Planning)

• 'Sustainable Cities Possible or Impossible: A Critical Review'. Authors: Hisham Moustafa, Husam AlWaer and Tamer Gado.
• Peer reviewed conference proceedings. The 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Architecture and Urban Development

The wounds inflected upon the Urban Landscape, which occurred in the modern and the postmodern eras are manifested in visually unappealing places, impoverishment of public space and heightened perception of fear, diminished sense of place and sense of community, and environmental degradation.

The main aim of the thesis to create a flexible framework that tackles the philosophy of place making in a manner that involves both professional stakeholders and the community. The main objectives are; to understand integral urbanism and its dimensions, create a set of indicators for place making via integralism, incorporate stakeholder engagement into the mix, and adapt the integral indicators on different design based scenarios.

1. Evolution of the philosophy or urbanism and place making
2. The indicators of integral urbanism and its affect on Place making
3. Stakeholders engagement in the process of selecting the Key Performance indicators.
4. Creating a benchmark tool, Integrate Indicators Toolkit (I Squared Toolkit) for Place making.
5. Adaptation of the integrate Indicators toolkit on different design based neighbourhood scenarios.

A closely argued thesis involving stakeholder and community engagement in the process of creating a benchmark to measure place making on the neighbourhood scale.

This ongoing work has been the subject of 1 year work (Still 2 years to go) of interviews, and discussions with several professionals in the field of urban design and architecture. It is also a combination of one conference paper, and two journal papers in progress.

On the understanding of the philosophy of place making in the professional world as there is no tool designed solely for the measurement of place making in any area. The thesis attempts to create a benchmark that helps in the measuring of place making on the neighbourhood scale. It gives a better understanding of the importance of the relinquishment of some of the control, which most professionals have, to the citizens and how this could be incorporated in the process of creating a flexible framework.