Rethinking Suburbs: Morphological and Network Analysis Review

Rethinking suburbs provides answers to how can we design and plan neighborhoods in which non-motorized mobility is a viable and efficient alternative; and how the street systems and alleys of neighborhoods can be designed and retrofitted to make their urban fabrics more efficient and integrated.

Streets play significant roles in meeting multiple sustainability objectives. This research addresses Abu Dhabi’s and Dubai’s street connectivity at the neighborhood (local) and city (global) scales. It focuses on two parameters of street network analysis: efficiency and centrality. Efficiency is evaluated in terms of directness, noting that network designs that provide short and direct access between origins and destinations are more efficient. Centrality is evaluated using graph theory metrics that enable the identification of high- and low-accessibility locations within networks.

The conventional suburban model of low-density, automobile-centric development with fragmented streets cannot foster high levels of accessibility within neighborhoods. This study offers an alternative, evidence-based suburban design model for future cities.

Khaled Alawadi is the first UAE national scholar to specialize in the design of sustainable cities, Dr. Alawadi is Assistant Professor of Sustainable Urbanism at Khalifa University, where he founded the MSc. in Sustainable Critical Infrastructure program. He is a trained architect, planner and urban designer whose research is devoted to urban design, housing and urbanism, especially the relationships between the built environment and sustainable development. Dr. Alawadi recently served as Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism, and previously worked as an architect for Dubai Municipality and as an Assistant Professor at UAE University. He holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin. And he has curated the National Pavilion UAE which presented Lifescapes Beyond Bigness, an exhibition exploring human-scale architectural landscapes, at the 2018 La Biennale di Venezia, or Venice Biennale. Dr. Alawadi is well established scholar who investigated timely and relevant topics to urban form and sustainability in the MENA region and he has published papers in top journals in urban planning and design such as the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Transportation Research A, Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urbanism, Cities, and Sustainable Cities and Society.