How can concrete industry contribute to smart cities in mitigating climate change challenges?

A GCC perspective

Cement and concrete are among the major manufactured materials used, and their environmental impact is constantly under debate. As their use increases, concrete and cement production results in significant GHG emissions and puts increasing stress on natural resources sustainability, especially water. Here, we explore the environmental challenges of cement and concrete industry transformation and highlight existing options that could be undertaken over the coming decades to mitigate environmental impacts of cement and concrete production. The analysis indicates that promising avenues exist for sustainable use of concrete, which reconcile societal needs, ecological imperatives, and technical capabilities.

Densification as New Urban Agenda implementation tool toward smart cities

The Riyadh's case

The challenge of applying the New Urbana Agenda in a sprawling city such as Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is an interesting case to examine: A fast-growing city with an ambition to further stimulate economic growth and achieve prosperity and better quality of life. The policy report provides some historical background to why such expansion has occurred and tries to analyse challenges, proposing initial steps towards shifting the direction and setting it on a trajectory that would lead to achieving some of the objectives in the medium and long term.

Smart Cities and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Two pillars of Governance in the GCC?

The interlinking of two potent policy-making paradigms: Smart Cities and SDG 11, might support not only functional urban domains such as transportation, health, home but spanning over wider concepts as digital Governance, e-democracy, health care access, public-private partnerships, well-being. Smart connectivity can facilitate a qualitative experience for citizens and overall inclusion to better services and integration, making local governments the main actors of the urban transformation, and allowing the shift from "smart cities" to the smart growth of all cities.

Shared Mobility Solutions in the Making of a Smart-City

An update from Dubai

Dubai has become an important global city, and a well know destination for job seekers and tourists. In addition to spectacular architecture and urban projects, the adoption of smart city technologies has improved the quality of life considerably within the city. Some of these smart technologies are changing the transportation sector, and the introduction of shared mobility solutions has recently created an improved experience for the residents. Still, some problems within the built environment reduce the impact of these otherwise promising technologies.

Transit Oriented Development as a Smart City's Interface

A GCC Perspective

Train Stations are nodes of exchange, a manifestation of technology integration and social needs, designed and built on fluxes of trains, goods, and people. Less traceable are the flows when those spread in the city, commuting in different ways, by bus or bikes, cabs, or just by walking. As public, smart, hybrid, and micro, mobility is a big component of smart cities, with metro stations as the district's core: hyper connectors among multiverses. But, how different cities or districts (the multiverses) do exist around stations? That is where the smart city meets transit development oriented (TOD).

Economic Diversification in the Gulf States

Opportunities and Challenges

Over two days, 13 & 14th of November, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, in partnership with the Regional Programme Gulf States at Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, organized a conference in Doha to discuss the economic diversification in the Gulf States.

Citizenship in the Gulf

For Khaleeji women, citizenship is a paradox of simultaneous privilege and disenfranchisement. Citizenship in the Gulf is largely confined to nativist/tribalist economic privilege, and defines womanhood through religio-traditional and patriarchal lenses. Due to this tension, women who marry foreigners are perceived to be even more disadvantaged. Unable to pass on their citizenship, this exclusion dominates the discourse on citizenship and womanhood in the Gulf. Yet, marrying a foreigner is a right transgressively wrested from the patriarchal authority, and should be seen as an act of self-empowerment and emancipation. As such, I wish to propose a new lens by which to re-imagine exclusion as an avenue that allows for a subversive form of agency to emerge through which women can give their children the opportunity to escape the socio-political constraints of Gulf citizenship.

Green as a smart infrastructure for humanized cities in the GCC Anna Laura

Life in the GCC, dominated by an extremely hot climate, was possible thanks to the karstic underground water system and its manifestation as oases. Oases, offering water, shade, and palm groves, provided food and created substantial climate mitigation, making social life possible within the desert. Oases-based settlements and coastal urbanisms generated the unique circular economy system for what we know today as Gulf Countries. Green infrastructures, already a must in worldwide urbanism, have become a fundamental tool for the quality of life in future GCC cities.

How can cultural heritage serve human-centered smart cities in the GCC?

In common sense, historical buildings and settlements couldn’t be more distant from smart technology; however, those might play the main role in smart cities as a sustainable and human-centered urbanism model, creating a sense of belonging rooting on the local identity. Moreover, since Arab urbanism has been an exceptionally resilient and sustainable construct within extremely difficult environmental conditions, it has to be trusted as an incredible potential of traditional constructive strategies and implemented through the most modern technologies in the GCC smart-cities-to-be.

Women, Law and Gender Inequality

Gender inequality remains an important issue worldwide, this article focuses specifically in Qatar. Gender inequality plays a major role in restricting women’s lives in several aspects. These restrictions are legally and structurally enabled and justified in the name of customs and culture. Based on recent research, the current laws in Qatar do not protect women as equal citizens. In order for women to feel protected in their own country, there is a need for law reforms including those on gender violence, that require urgent action.