Cities that won't dissolve.
A reflection on why walkability in Gulf cities is not only a question of heat, but of exposure. This piece argues for treating shade as essential public infrastructure, planned with the same seriousness as roads, drainage, transit, and lighting.
A personal meditation on the human urge to build, the spiritual responsibility of stewardship, and the danger of ego in shaping the built environment. The essay asks what it means to build not for legacy or spectacle, but for dignity, care, and better lives.
Building on the idea of re-souqification, this essay argues that Gulf heritage districts should not simply look like souqs, but behave like them. It explores affordability, informality, mixed use, and everyday life as the real foundations of authentic urban heritage.
This piece questions whether global models of green urbanism can be directly imported into desert cities. It proposes a more locally grounded approach to nature-embedded urbanism, one that works with arid landscapes, water scarcity, native ecologies, and Khaleeji environmental memory.
A reflective essay on what it means to practice urban planning in Qatar five years into the profession. It explores planning as power, paperwork, compromise, and nation-building, while asking how planners can better serve the everyday city.
Through a personal journey to Ushaiqer, this essay reflects on heritage not only as buildings or preservation policy, but as emotional geography. It asks how planning can honor memory, ancestry, belonging, and the places that make people feel they have returned.
Written in collaboration with Salman Al-Sulaiti, this article examines how the villa became the dominant housing form in Qatar and the Gulf. It argues that regulations, setbacks, and imported planning models helped displace indigenous courtyard-based ways of living.
This article revisits the Arab-Islamic city as a governed, negotiated, and highly regulated urban form rather than a chaotic or unplanned one. It explores how sharia, community consensus, privacy, and case-by-case mediation shaped dynamic building regulations, asking what Gulf cities today might learn from these bottom-up traditions.
This article reframes vernacular architecture as more than heritage aesthetics. It explores how traditional urban forms, materials, courtyards, narrow streets, and climate-responsive design offer environmental lessons for contemporary Gulf cities.
An exploration of how Islamic values, privacy, public life, and climate shaped the traditional Arab-Islamic city. The article looks at alleyways, courtyards, mosques, markets, and shaded pedestrian networks as part of a distinct urban logic.
This early essay asks whether walking can realistically work in Gulf cities shaped by harsh climates and car dependency. It argues that heat matters, but poor infrastructure, exposed streets, and weak pedestrian networks are just as important in explaining why people do not walk.
A critical look at Doha’s historic urban core and the urgency of protecting ordinary historic buildings, not only museum-like landmarks. The article argues that preservation should support living heritage districts, local memory, and the cultural identity of the city.
An introduction to a Qatar Foundation op-ed on cars, walking, and the changing relationship between Qataris and the city. The piece reflects on how automobile dependency has reshaped everyday life, weakened street culture, and altered the way people experience Doha.