García-Bellido y la renovación del paradigma urbano: post-escriptum a la Propiedad Desagregada

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El fenómeno urbano en los siglos XX y XXI: nuevas tendencias del desarrollo urbano

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New holiday towns as Non-places: the case of Marina d'Or

Since the start of tourism as rewarding and massive activity in the mid-nineteenth century, new tourist destinations have appeared to satisfy mass tourism. Among the different urban developments that have taken place so far, the objective of this paper is to reflect on a model of tourist development that is spreading internationally, the New holiday towns. These urban settlements can reach large dimensions in size and population, so producing appreciable economic, political and environmental impacts in their environment. But, what about the social impact that these NHTs involve? Tthrough the analysis of a specific case, Marina d’Or, social aspects were investigated with the help of a quantitative method, the Survey: prototype users; frequency by residents in town; relations with its neighbors; intensity of use that they make of public space and their satisfaction and valuation of urban space. And finally with a qualitative methodology, the Participant Observation, the diversity of its urban space and the ways of inhabiting it were analyzed.Peer Reviewe

Housing types and choices in Saudi Arabia

Recently, and because of oil revenues, Gulf countries achieved great developments and made huge steps to be an advanced countries. These revenues encouraged Gulf countries to develop their economy, infrastructures and policies. Among Gulf countries, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made a noticeable progress in recent decades in enhancing and developing the economy and urban form. Presently, there were different types of housing such as Villas, Duplex villas, Penthouse and so on. These housing divided, according to various factors such as Family income, requirement and needs, also take into account of the customs and traditions in the Saudi community. This study will discuss some of these changes like Housing sizes and use, actual needs, ability and the reasons behind these changes. Moreover, it is divided into two main parts, Theoretical review and analysis of data collection. The research techniques used are analysis of E-Questionnaire. Finally, the study would help to understand some of the expectations and needs of the Saudi Residents in the biggest cities in Saudi Arabia, for example the majority of households prefer to live in an independent and separate housing like (Villa)

New holiday towns as Non-places: the case of Marina d'Or

Since the start of tourism as rewarding and massive activity in the mid-nineteenth century, new tourist destinations have appeared to satisfy mass tourism. Among the different urban developments that have taken place so far, the objective of this paper is to reflect on a model of tourist development that is spreading internationally, the New holiday towns. These urban settlements can reach large dimensions in size and population, so producing appreciable economic, political and environmental impacts in their environment. But, what about the social impact that these NHTs involve? Tthrough the analysis of a specific case, Marina d’Or, social aspects were investigated with the help of a quantitative method, the Survey: prototype users; frequency by residents in town; relations with its neighbors; intensity of use that they make of public space and their satisfaction and valuation of urban space. And finally with a qualitative methodology, the Participant Observation, the diversity of its urban space and the ways of inhabiting it were analyzed.Peer Reviewe

Mapping land cover changes of pilgrimage sites in Mecca using multi-temporal satellite imagery

The Pilgrimage sites (Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah) located in the southeast part of the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, or “Hajj Sites” as it is known, are one of the most important annual assembly areas for Muslims from all over the world and being visited by millions of pilgrims every year to perform the Islamic pilgrimage (Hajj). The sites have undergone significant change in land cover since the government embarked on a course of intense development projects 20 years ago, as a result of the increase in the number of pilgrims every year. Considering lack of studies that measure and evaluate land cover changes of the sites, this study detects, analyzes and evaluates land cover changes in Hajj sites from 1997 to 2013 using Landsat images of four different time periods, i.e., Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 1998, and Lamdsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus(ETM+) of 2003, 2008 and 2013. The supervised classification methodology has been employed through testing its different techniques to obtain the best possible result; the images of the study area were categorized into five different classes’ namely Built-up areas, Street, Mountain, un built-up and Vegetation. The comparison (pixel by pixel) was used to land cover changes detection. Generally, the results show a noticeable increase in area on both built-up and street due to the rapid development in the areas with decrease in vegetation and un built-up. The provided information, combined with the field observation work is essential for assist future planning and decisions in one hand, and on the other hand can play an important role in quantifying and understanding the relationship between population growth (pilgrims) and land cover changes

Una aproximación cuantitativa a la calidad de zona: caso residencial Barcelona

La calidad de zona se encuentra íntimamente ligada a las preferencias de los individuos por ocupar lugares específicos de un área geográfica, municipio, ciudad, distrito o barrio. En donde sea posible tener facilidades a las mejores condiciones de acceso al trabajo, a equipamientos urbanos o simplemente donde poder establecer las relaciones sociales de su preferencia. Este documento tiene el propósito de mostrar la metodología utilizada para estimar los elementos de calidad que caracterizan una zona urbana residencial. Los elementos considerados parten de indicadores obtenidos de las bases de datos oficiales, pasando por diversas etapas de síntesis en conceptos cada vez más amplios hasta llegar a un indicador sintético de calidad de zona. La síntesis gradual de la información de calidad de zona se realiza a partir de un método multivariante de reducción de la información (Componentes Principales) y se complementa con otro método de suma de distancias para obtener indicadores sintéticos (Distancia Ponderada 2). Para finalmente mostrar sus valores en la geografía del Municipio de Barcelona, utilizando herramientas de sistemas de información geográficaPeer Reviewe

Estimación de la tasa de rentabilidad inmobiliaria: caso Barcelona

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Future research areas on Urban Sustainability in Europe

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Urban detection, delimitation and morphology: comparative analysis of selective "megacities"

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