The increase in population in the past few decades all over a large number of underdeveloped world lead to the augmentation of population crisis, especially among the low income population categories. This urged many governments of such countries including the governments of our Arabian area to adopt special residential policies for those categories to alleviate the strain of this problem. Ever since the beginning of twentieth century, Yemen (especially its southern part) had gone through many experiences in erecting residential units for the low income individuals throughout metropolitan outskirts around its principal cities making best use of the universal expertise in this field. Despite the serious attempt to control the aggravation of the population problem through such residential units, yet, due to its failure to be based upon authentic accurate studies on the one hand, and due to the lack of participation of the popular classes in the decision making process at any stage at all on the other hand, it transformed these residential units into forming an element of expulsion for the population for many long years for the unavailability of a great number of services around them and also due to the random construction that spread throughout its streets and buildings later on because they were neither culturally nor socially suitable for the inhabitants. The research aims at introducing some of these experiences, discussing them, analyzing them, and assessing them, along with trying to derive the main features by comparing them with selected styles of conventional construction. The study will concentrate upon such residential unites at the cities of Aden and Mukalla by the discussing the various advantages and disadvantages of those projects and the extent of the cultural and the social effects of such projects upon the inhabitants in order to set a future criteria for certain residential units that may satisfy the requirements for the population and delimit the random building phenomenon and the visual pollution.

The escalating need for modern services in the cities nowadays due to the extensive use of cars and the great increase in the human concentration and density and by far the increase in real estate values greatly instigated these changes. Nevertheless, the basic urban tissue did not assimilate all these changes in a manner that may allow the functions expected of them to be executed. This resulted in the failure of a portion of the services as well as in the change of the nature of the urban tissue in haphazard way during this particular period. Thus, the qualitative environmental level in the area was greatly affected. The city of Mukalla, which is the capital of the governorate of Hadhramout (Yemen), is situated on the coast of the Arabian Sea on longitude (49.23) East and latitude (14.39) North. Throughout many a consecutive period in time, the city had passed through many variation that changed its features and its basic nature to great extent. Therefore, this study tackles the most important problems the area is suffering from, for the sake of outlining the nature of these problems and attempting by far to give general planning and designing recommendations for the development of the area based upon the methodical assessment of the elements of the urban tissue in the old sector of Mukalla.

Yemen in general and Hadhramout in particular is replete with a rich cultural, tradition and ancient heritage. The most important one is the clay architecture arts; in Hadhramout there are many of the examples of the clay architecture such as some existed cities full of life. The most famous and important one is the Historical City of Shibam with its wall. Shibam with its palaces, fortresses, towers and houses with over 500 years of age. Their altitude reaches up to eight floors. They are considered the oldest altitude skyscrapers in the world. Despite that the city is inhabited but its buildings still need maintenance. Also the existence of its buildings in an old architecture environment makes them suffer from physical infrastructure limitations and their inability to meet the emerging needs of life and the prosperity of modern health services -such as health services, spacious rooms and other requirements of the Modern House in addition to ongoing maintenance requirements. This made them vulnerable to emigrate and serious neglect, and hence the deterioration and oblivion. Despite their traditional expertise for hundreds of years in building operations and maintenance, but there were some errors and deficiencies in circulation across generations need to be correct and re-examined in order to access to scientific solutions in the industry of mud bricks, roofing, and the outside layer (the coating) as well as addressing the cracks and mud building diseases .This research aims to study the buildings-maintenance of the historical city of Shibam Hadhramout, at this time as a model for ways to restore mud buildings with the traditional methods to come up with recommendations aimed to develop the maintenance and modernization of the house in a steady scientific method .

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