Cities of the Future: Challenges and Opportunities

​This book seeks to address the key challenges and opportunities of "future cities" embracing novel approaches and grounded technologies in pursuing a vision for smart, inclusive cities. The objective of this book is to discuss multiple areas at the local, national, and international levels and how these challenges can hinder the development objectives planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. The chapters featured in this collection were presented at the 6th Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022), held at the Effat University, Jeddah. MIC’s objective is to build bridges between science, technology, and innovation, seen as the key levers of attaining the SDGs.

This book provides the most innovative ideas presented at the conference to address the key manifestation of “future cities" to embrace novel approaches and grounded technologies in the pursue of a vision for smart inclusive cities. It thus represents a platform for diverse contributions from academicsand practitioners to present their different perspectives addressed theoretically as well as in practice concerning the challenges and opportunities of future cities. This includes contributions from decision-makers, architects, urban planners, urban designers, entrepreneurs, and educators to stimulate discussion covering the latest on the challenges and opportunities for better future cities in the different domains of architecture, building science and technology, environmental design, mobility & infrastructure, urban design & landscape, housing & real estate developments, urban planning, governance, socio-cultural & economic development, community engagement, tourism and heritage revitalization.

​​​Asmaa Ibrahim is currently the Dean of the College of Architecture & Design at Effat University. She is originally a Professor of urban development at the Arch. Dep. Faculty of Engineering, Cairo Univ. with 18 years of academic and professional experience. She was the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow in the SPURS program at MIT, USA (2018/2019). She was the main coordinator in the Double Master Program with Cottbus University in Germany, and Alex. University. She has fourteen years of experience in strategic regional and urban planning projects in UN HABITAT, GOPP, and GIZ with a focus on community development, gender programming and regeneration policies in historic districts, and new urban expansions. She has received extensive training at the World Resource Institute in Washington DC and Oxfam America in Boston in 2018/2019. She has more than 20 international publications in the field of sustainable urbanism 

Mady Mohamed is a Professor of Architecture, joined Effat University in Fall-2014. He received his PhD degree at Dundee School of Architecture, UK on July/2009. He has more than 20 years of academic and practice experience. Through his private firm, Mady participated in the design and construction for several projects and he was the sole architect and the main architectural/LEED consultant for different residential, office, medical and educational buildings. Mady became an authorized architectural consultant by the Egyptian Syndicate for Engineering in 2013 and a LEED Green Associate by the USGBC in 2014 and. He is an authorized trainer for Education for Sustainable development ESD by the European Union/Egyptian Ministry of Education since 2014. He is a CO-Editor of EEER, IBPSA-Egypt; Editor Team Member of (EEEJ), USA; Novelty Journals, India, and a reviewer at (JEE), Canada. Also, he is a member of (SESG, Scotland), (IACSIT, Singapore), (GESTW, Egypt), (ISDS, Japan), and (AASCIT)

Mohamed Fekry is a professor of architecture and design. He received his Masters and Ph.D. in Architecture from Cairo University, Egypt in 1999, 2004 respectively. Dr. Fekry's Ph.D. thesis entitled “THE ROLE OF CRITICISM IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION: An Experimental Model for Enhancing the Architectural Students' Critical Skills in Design Studio”. It focuses on developing one of the higher mental skills of the students of Architecture; where an experimental model was applied, which increased the students’ participation in the design studio, encouraged the students’ skills in presentation of ideas and design projects, improved the students’ ability to connect between the design concept and appropriate design solutions, and improved their ability of analysing and introducing constructive criticism of the design projects. Dr. Fekry has taught Architecture and Design in Egypt  at Cairo University between 1995 and 2009. Also, he has taught Architecture and Design in KSA at Umm Al-Qura University between 2009 and2013. He is currently teaching courses in capstone project and Design Studios at Effat University, Saudi Arabia.