Cities of the Future: Challenges and Opportunities
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2023-01-02
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Preface Cities are where ideas form, where innovation glows, and where economic growth largely flourishes. They are where most people live and where significant risks can emerge as well as where challenges can be magnified. In the age of urban digitization, new and complex issues are emerging, and today's cities are likely on the cusp of the largest global social and economic transformation. Facing the pressing challenges of the unprecedented rates of urban expansions, it becomes inevitable to adopt a shared responsibility to create healthier, more accessible, and intelligent cities to better use human resources, promote needs and capacities, and advance a decent quality of life. Considering the fact that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is currently witnessing rapid growing urbanization due to demographic, social, and economic growth in the country that increased the number of cities. In addition to the current implementation of the Future Saudi Cities Program in line with the 2030 Saudi Arabia's vision and the National Transformation Program. The 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022) seeks to address the key challenges and opportunities of "future cities" to embrace novel approaches and grounded technologies in pursuing a vision for smart, inclusive cities. This volume contains papers presented at the 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022). While the key objective of MIC is to build bridges between science, technology, and innovation, the 2022 MIC focused on cities of the future, whereby cities appear to be in a state of continuous expansion; their population growth has historically occurred in cycles. Innovations have generally addressed the challenges posed by rising populations, only to be replaced by new hurdles. The thrust of the discussion in the proceedings is formed by multiple areas addressing challenges and opportunities of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels and how these challenges can hinder the development objectives planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. Accordingly, the papers included in this volume revolve around three sections: The first section discusses the future of the Saudi cities and addresses different aspects and dimensions of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels. The papers also tackled critical challenges facing the current cities and how these challenges can hinder the development objective planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. The focus of the papers varied from managing a handling food in cities of tomorrow, cities and tourism, intelligent cities of the future, problems of efficient exploitation of land in cities, and maintaining a city's identity in the cities of the future. The second section revolves around smart, inclusive, and livable cities. Few papers tackled the role the social dimension can play in future cities. Future cities are not only places where smart technologies, advanced communication, and creativity meet but also cities that facilitate spaces and venues which can contribute to the residents' quality of life and social cohesion. Investigating the social dimension in future cities was the core of many presentations. Sense of community, safety, physical health and wellbeing, and economic activities are all aspects that proved to be significant to the planning and design of our future cities. Future cities are also characterized by workforce development, which helps bridge skill mismatches and gaps between the job opportunities and local workers, linking the domestic workforce and the economic development with high-impact and well-suited workforce training and development services. The third section discusses environmental issues and smart solutions for future cities recognizing the benefits of a green approach to urban planning and design and the potential to lower urban temperatures, mitigate air pollution and build natural environmental resilience. Sustainability experts predict carbon-neutral cities full of electric vehicles and bike-sharing schemes, with improved air quality. The Editors hope that the selected papers for this volume will lead to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of future cities. Viewed in this way, this volume is intended to promote research in the domains of architecture, urban design, and urban planning.