Social housing has been a forefront research topic, especially from its economic and socio-cultural factors. The nature of social housing in the Arabian Gulf Countries has been distinctive in its approach with usually generous areas and urban sprawl designs. Recently, most of these Arabian Gulf Countries have gone through a profound transformation in their social and housing paradigms influenced by their sustainability-adopted agendas. Still, scholarly documentation and analysis of the processes and products of these transformed paradigms are largely missing, or at least fragmented. There is a desperate need to boost research work in this field as related to each city/country in this region, with largely expected mutual effects that these experiences might have on each other and on the global debate about sustainable and resilient social housing as a whole.

This Research Topic mainly investigates the recent decision-making processes and architectural/urban products that aimed to develop sustainable and resilient social housing in the cities of the Arabian Gulf Countries including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar. The investigation is expected to critically analyze the processes and products of different social housing experiences and to shed light on the pros and cons of each experience in light of the well-established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the adopted local sustainable development and housing agendas in each context. Mutual benefits and extracted lessons for more resilient and sustainable social housing are expected as the ultimate output of this research topic.

This special topic attempts to bridge the gap in the social housing discourse in this region of the world by compiling rigorous research work about both the decision-making processes and the end product of environmentally, socio-culturally, and economically social housing development theories and applications with but not inclusive to the following themes:

• The Social Housing Unit as a Mixed-Use Facility;

• From Low-rise to ‘Vertical’ Social Housing;

• Urban Farms Integration in Neighbourhood Design;

• VR/MR/AR Advanced Tools for Residents’ Engagement in Social Housing Design;

• Efficiency of utilization of BIPV and Other Renewable Energy Methods in Social Housing Design;

• Deep Thermal Retrofitting of Existing Social Housing;

• Smart Systems and Materials for Net-Zero Energy and Carbon-Neutrality of Social Housing;

• Resilient, Adaptive, and Inclusive Design of Social Housing;

• Advanced Construction Systems, Methods, and Management Processes for Social Housing;

• Outdoor Thermal Comfort Strategies for Social Housing Neighborhoods in Extreme Climates;

• Micro- and Meso-mobility Support for Non-motorized and Personal Transportation;

• Local Measures for Walkability and Accessibility in Social Housing Neighborhoods;

• Urban Morphology and Sustainability in Social Housing Neighborhoods;

• Form-based Codes Vs. Land Use Planning in Social Housing Neighborhoods;

• Regenerative and Adaptive Design Techniques;

• Densification and Mixed-use as Urban Regeneration Strategies.

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New Approaches for Sustainable & Resilient Processes and Products of Social Housing Development in the Arabian Gulf Countries - Vol 2