Planning new sustainable neighborhoods is essential to achieve environmentally friendly, economically vibrant, culturally meaningful cities. Building new communities that are physically and socially sustainable is a challenge when resolving the city"s housing crisis and avoiding problems. These new communities that are physically and socially sustainable to resolve the communities" housing and environmental degradation , problems of poverty,and insecurity. Moreover, there are other challenges for planning the sustainable neighborhoods. Sustainable urban planning plays an important role in achieving sustainable growth and development by integrating sustainable development principles in urban planning strategies.However, sustainable urban development of neighborhoods is important to achieve the goals of environmental improvements through the development of land use, transportation, housing, energy efficiency, economic development, and public health. Based on the literature review ,the environmental aspects of urban development strategies are deduced to help neighborhoods achieve the sustainable goals studied. Then by analyzing international and local case studies the paper concludes guidelines to be applied in planning sustainable neighborhoods. Finally, the design guidelines for sustainable neighborhood planning are deduced and applied on Alex west an existing residential neighborhood in Alexandria, some of the guidelines are applied in the chosen neighborhood.

Cairo; the capital of Egypt, is a rich architectural environment with long history extending over 70,000 years. The rich history is still educating and informing knowledge in all fields of science. An important part of this history is the Islamic era and its vibrant architecture. This research studies the architecture of houses in old Cairo and focuses mainly on their courtyards. Courtyards in old houses served many purposes; social, religious and environmental factors. Egypt has been confronted with an escalating energy demand due to the gradual rise in the use of mechanical ventilation associated with loss in natural ventilation design in houses. This paper aims at learning from the past to achieve a sustainable built environment by understanding the necessity of passive ventilation strategies and how courtyards inform it. This is achieved through inductive methods such as literature review represented in the first part and analytical method through the application of passive ventilation in an old courtyard Islamic house.