In Saudi Arabia, an array of diverse strategies has been applied in response to the adverse effects of urban sprawl. A review of the historical proliferation of these strategies indicates that although in the short term the strategies have achieved high-quality infrastructure in some parts of the major cities, longer-term prospects are less promising since numerous urban problems persist in these cities. Among these problems are uncontrolled developments in the fringes, inadequate urban services, spiralling land prices and construction costs, the proliferation of slums and degrading quality of the urban environment. This research focuses on urban growth management as an approach for sustainable communities. The study will then discuss urban growth management as a discipline that can empower Jeddah as one of the fastest Saudi major cities to generate better urban development strategies and policies for a new generation of communities. This research paper explores ways to manage Jeddah’s urban growth and new development. The objective is to generate new communities that offer higher standards of living while meeting the challenge inside the existing urban mass by providing the much-needed new policies to limit and control urban growth. It is, therefore, an absolute must begin revising our urban growth and spatial development policies and plans. New theories of urban growth, development and management must be carefully examined and studied, and solutions must be devised, sooner than later, to help promote achieving sustainable urban management in Saudi Arabia.

Type-2 diabetes is a growing lifestyle disease mainly due to increasing physical inactivity but also associated with various other variables. In Saudi Arabia, around 58.5% of the population is deemed to be physically inactive. Against this background, this study attempts explore the spatial heterogeneity of Type-2 diabetes prevalence in Jeddah and to estimate various socio-economic and built environment variables contributing to the prevalence of this disease based on modelling by ordinary least squares (OLS), weighted regression (GWR) and multi-scale geographically weighted (MGWR). Our OLS results suggest that income, population density, commercial land use and Saudi population characteristics are statistically significant for Type-2 diabetes prevalence. However, by the GWR model, income, commercial land use and Saudi population characteristics were significantly positive while population density was significantly negative in this model for 70.6%, 9.1%, 26.6% and 58.7%, respectively, out of 109 districts investigated; by the MGWR model, the corresponding results were 100%, 22%, 100% and 100% of the districts. With the given data, the corrected Akaike information criterion (AICc), the adjusted R2, the log-likelihood and the residual sum of squares (RSS) indices demonstrated that the MGWR model outperformed the GWR and OLS models explaining 29% more variance than the OLS model, and 10.2% more than the GWR model. These results support the development of evidence-based policies for the spatial allocation of health associated resources for the control of Type-2 diabetes in Jeddah and other cities in the Arabian Gulf.

Sustainability as a concept is tackled a lot in contemporary urbanism due to its importance; consequently, this led to the development of global trends toward achieving it. The current research attempts to identify how sustainability could be achieved in urban design and how to comply with the global concerns. This paper tackles the experiences of the global trends toward sustainability concepts in terms of its application by examining a range of contemporary global urban examples. It depends on a comparative analytical assessment using the ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Neighborhood Development, LEED-ND’ assessment system in order to address the criteria measuring the sustainability indicators for these examples. These criteria are mainly grouped under the following categories: sustainable planning and design, water management, energy management, waste management, transportation and construction materials and resources. The research mainly aims to identify strategies and criteria assisting in achieving sustainability concept and implementation in urbanism at international level and their role in achieving sustainable urban settlements in Saudi Arabia. In order to achieve this aim, the research methodology includes the following: review of the global sustainability assessment tools, review of the ‘LEED-ND’ assessment system, analytical comparative assessment of ‘King Abdullah University of Science and Technology’ and ‘Masdar City’ according to the ‘LEED-ND’ system as case studies and identifying strategies and criteria that achieve sustainability in urban design and planning.

The change in land-use over a certain period of time is inevitable. This paper investigates the issue of land use change on agricultural land that has become a phenomenon affecting the economy and environment in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. Agriculture is the main economic source of Afghan cities, however, due to rapid population growth, population densification, and inability to apply Kabul city’s master plan and regulations, a large portion of land cover transformed from agricultural areas to unplanned developments and have shifted the function of communities from productive societies into consumer and dependent societies. The study sheds light on Yakatoot as a study farmland area in Kabul city to present an alive example of what is happening in the reality of agricultural land in Kabul. Therefore, approaches for sustainable conversion of agricultural land in Kabul city is a vital quest that needs to be followed seriously. The study illustrates Afghanistan's land laws. It identifies the social, economic and environmental impacts of land-use change. This paper applies qualitative methods, where data and analysis worked by using field surveys, aerial photographs from Google Earth and data collected from CRIDA. It also investigates international experience regarding land-use change and sustainable solutions. Therefore, due to positive implications of urban agriculture practice as a feasible and sustainable approach to tackle the ongoing challenges related to land-use change in Kabul city, this paper suggests inducing this approach in Kabul city’s master plan and other urban initiatives because it will not only lead to environmental protection, but also, it will re-establish economic stability, enhance social welfare, revive city’s historic identity.

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