Qatar’s National Research Strategy (QNRS) supports research that informs and enables more sustainable urbanisation and a healthier living environment. Furthermore, QNRS aims to promote a vibrant research culture and to develop and strengthen interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research partnership between the academic, private, and public components of the research enterprise both within Qatar and internationally. This workshop addresses both of these goals and aims to benefit Qatar by presenting new approaches in the emerging crossdisciplinary fields of sustainable urbanism and its related fields.

Sustainable Urbanism: New Paradigms

Sustainable Urbanism: New Paradigms discusses new approaches to physical planning of the built environment, in particular ones that integrate landscape, ecology and urban planning, as well as urban design that considers the city as a system. The themes include urban biodiversity, food urbanism and food security, landscape urbanism, Blue Urbanism and water sensitive urbanism. The introduction to regenerative urbanism will set the stage for the presentations and discussions with a systems thinking approach to the sustainable city.

Sustainable Urbanism and the Social Sciences

Sustainable Urbanism and the Social Sciences focusses on people and communities in the city, and their role in the sustainability of a healthy, safe and liveable city. The presentation themes include integrating the disciplines of urbanism with the social sciences; participatory design that engages citizens; bottom up and informal urbanism; socio-ecological approaches to urban design and planning: labour, crime, and health in sustainable urbanism.

Sustainable Urbanism, Urban Systems, Data and Technologies

Sustainable Urbanism, Urban Systems and New Technologies discusses the concept of technology and the sustainable city. The thematic focus includes parametric design for sustainable urbanism, crowd sourcing and digital media for participative urbanism; technologies for adaptive planning and alternative futures, and beyond smart cities to smart citizens.