Cultural heritage is by far a major target in the European policy agenda in the last years as it demonstrates to be a valuable driver for urban development. Though, cultural heritage is still a fragile asset, which is often either overexploited or hidden and underdeveloped. The second case makes the object of our paper, which covers the topic of a running project – ISTER ConnectIng hiSTorical Danube rEgions Roman routes, financed under the 3rd call of the INTERREG Danube program. The ISTER project addresses the challenge of Roman heritage discontinuity, reflected on one hand, by a low level of investment and connection between archaeological heritage resources and local/ regional productive sectors, and on the other hand, by the limited attractiveness of the archaeological heritage as driver for future development. The purpose of this paper thus is two-fold. Firstly, it aims at delivering an overview of recent trends in policy and regulations associated to tapping the potential of cultural heritage as a driver for sustainable development. Specifically, the paper analyses briefly the background and the subsequent changes in the European approach to cultural heritage protection and valorisation, partly as a result of World Conventions and EU directives, party, as a consequence of the adopted common guidelines proposed by international organisations such as UNESCO or Europa Nostra. Over the past decades, CH definition and the approach to its protection and valorisation have constantly evolved, leading to the contemporary vision, which highlights the socio-economic benefits of preserving Cultural Heritage and its major role in achieving sustainable development and territorial cohesion. Thus, Cultural Heritage is placed on a cross-sectoral policy framework, influencing and being influenced by many key policy domains (socio-economic, cultural, environmental, spatial). The second purpose is then to explore the road from the international and European policy framework to the landscape of local laws and practices in several case studies along the Danube Region and beyond, following the main Roman Route from Porolissum (ancient Roman city currently located in Sălaj County, RO) to Rome (IT). Specifically, a comparative analysis of national/ regional/ local policy and regulatory frameworks will be conducted for the cities of Cluj-Napoca and Alba-Iulia (RO), Ptuj and Ljubljana (SLO), Rome (IT), as well as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg regions (DE). Finally, the paper discusses the added value (if there is any) of the internationally-promoted guidelines related to cultural heritage to the locally-adopted laws and tools for its protection, valorisation and use. The last section of the paper summarizes the main findings with special attention on the Danube Region context in Europe.

Ras Bufontas (RBF) Free Zone is a key component in Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA)’s mission to contribute to the human, social, economic and environmental development of Qatar, aligning with Qatar National Vision 2030 (QNV 2030) long-term sustainable development goals and pillars. RBF Free Zone is at a critical juncture: planned growth increases the zone population and development footprint; planned transit investments create greater connectivity opportunities; and its location immediately South of Hamad International Airport (HIA) provides potential to support synergies between aviation, air cargo, logistics facilities, setting RBF Free Zone to emerge as a logistics, aerospace services and advanced technology hub. Encompassing an area of approximately 4km², RBF Free Zone is located within Doha Municipality and includes buildings in operation, under construction and vacant land. RBF was initially planned as the first (QEZ-1) of three Qatar Economic Zones (QEZ) to be delivered by the Qatari Government to diversify Qatar’s predominantly resource based economy. QEZ-1 was envisaged to support light industrial and warehousing activities, with business functions comprising advanced technologies, specialized, 3PL and express logistics. The original RBF master plan was created in 2016. The 2017 Decree Law no.21 changed the status of RBF from an Economic Zone to a Free Zone, to promote foreign investment into the State of Qatar by offering commercial concessions attractive to international investors and encouraging partnerships with domestic service providers and local investors to improve business and trading activities. Subsequent to RBF becoming a Free Zone, the continuous changes to land use scenarios, master planning considerations, new bonded circulation and customs needs required an updated flexible master planning framework to guide RBF Free Zone’s long term economic growth, to allow for strategic development and holistic decision making, whilst prioritizing integration and leveraging existing assets and infrastructure. In early 2021, QFZA appointed a master planning consultant to update the RBF master plan, through review of existing work, urban design principles development, future projects integration, massing studies, design guidelines. The initial stage involved benchmarking similar developments (and their special program mix) in the region and worldwide, analyzing the site constraints and opportunities, identifying areas with imminent issues. The review findings informed the development of a general planning framework and strategy for urban design principles for identity enhancement and design coherence. Continuous interdisciplinary input was provided by various internal QFZA stakeholders, including QFZA Senior Management, throughout the urban framework development and design validation process. The new master plan framework provides applicable solutions that will solidify the relationship between RBF Free Zone and its surroundings (especially the HIA proximity), and outlines key structural elements such as: transportation network integrating macro and micro urban mobility solutions, enhanced landscape framework augmenting the public realm qualities and consolidating community facilities, clearly defined consolidated land use clusters, phasing strategy establishing priorities for key areas future economic growth by maintaining continuity in responsible development, sustainable urban design solutions that mitigate climate change impacts through urban layouts optimization for solar shading / daylight potentials, minimizing energy use, maximizing efficiency in energy generation, and maximizing renewable energy use. Sustainable development measures have already been implemented in RBF Free Zone, which has received the GSAS Design & Build 3 Stars Certificate for “Districts & Infrastructure Scheme”, whilst the iconic Business Innovation Park building has obtained the GSAS 3 Stars Certificate for “Design & Build Offices Scheme”. QFZA strives to achieve its commitment to QNV 2030 through an improved environmental management of RBF Free Zone that encompasses sustainable building design, effective climate change responses, sustainable urbanization, and a healthier, better connected user environment.

Makkah is at an inflection point, looking for a way forward, building on the history of the past 15 centuries. The last decades have not been kind to Makkah. It has succumbed to the challenges of contemporary cities and tried to solve them with inadequate efforts. Makkah, which should be the best example of a city in the world, sits now as a struggling city. Much of the fault lies in the contemporary and conventional city planning methods that have driven development in the city, which are at odds with the rich history of Islamic culture and city building. It is possible, however, to realign the fundamental quality of the teachings of Islam with the successful transformation of the city, through a strategy which drives decisions, policy, planning and other elements of the general growth of the city. The overall strategy for transforming the spatial structure of Makkah is two-fold. The first is to move away from mega-projects to a city that is comprised of a much more diverse, compact urban fabric. The second is to disengage the idea of land-use from the planning process. Land-use is a flawed planning structure because it relies on projecting uses, the most ephemeral of elements of the city, to propose future city form. In the plan, land-use, or more appropriate, project use, is used as a management tool to balance supporting systems. An Islamic city is cellular, growing from the individual and their family unit to the scale of communities. The subdivision structure for the city, both in terms of organizing the existing city, and in developing the new areas of the city, is structured around the individual (person, parcel) as the fundamental element of creating the city. The individual parcel is aggregated into clusters or blocks, that are small areas of community, whether families or just neighbors. Clusters and blocks are aggregated into neighborhoods, which are collectively identified areas with a particular identity emerging from the demographic situation as well as the businesses and other elements of the area. Building from the logic outlined above, a clear organizational structure is proposed that directly aligns the ideas of cultural Islam, the form of the religious and family-oriented organization, with the panning organization. In this structure is a mutually supportive relationship that incentivizes development that aligns with the goals and daily practices seen in the citizenry of Makkah, as well as providing an urban context that can be both familiar to visitors, as well as interesting, depending on the nature of the area of the city. The underlying structure of each district, built from the aggregation of its neighborhoods, which are in turn comprised of smaller clusters and blocks, provide a framework for variation while ensuring the overall vision for the city, of compactness, connectedness, and variation, are not sacrificed during the planning process. With this simple system it is possible to facilitate development that aligns directly with the vision for the future city. This is a fundamental shift from current, conventional land-use planning. It sets the parcel as the most important element of city building. This is critical because it starts with the smallest unit of developable land as the default, and creates an environment where the consolidation of parcels, which ultimately lead to city-killing mega projects, are the exception, and can only be executed through a rigorous process of variation or exception.

Over the last half century, Qatar has witnessed an excessive change on its economic and urban evolution. From coastal village where fishing and pearling were the main activities of its community to a country with ambitious vision for the future. Due to economic booming of oil / gas discovery early 1940, Qatar urban context drastically changed as urbanization process has been accelerated. As our economy, populations and community grow over time, a rapid urban development rates have been accelerate and the consequent negative environmental and climatic impacts on our cities are accelerated as well especially with high land demands for housing, commercial, mixed uses , transportation and community facilities uses. In addition, on 2 December 2010, FIFA appointed Qatar as the host for WORLD CUP 2022.Such factor imposed even further economic prosperity and rapid urban growth rates over the last decade. During such rapid urban development process and the associates challenges to create liveable environment was of high priority to Qatar National Master Plan. Hence, greater attention needed to be placed on the landscape design of our outdoor open spaces to ensure that they contribute in the creation of vibrant, healthy and liveable cities. Qatar National Development Framework addressed the strategic importance to establish Qatar National Landscape design guidelines (QNLDG). One of the main principles of the project is to cover the holistic approach of landscape and how it is imperative to understand that landscape is not merely trees-related nor city beautifications. It is one of the principal mediums to organize and shape urban places. It creates character and identity of places, and it is of multi-scale approach that operates at any level, both in regional and local scale. Qatar landscape design guidelines encourage the use of landscaping to address many of the existing challenges of the urban environment by providing a national reference and guide on what constitute as good place-making practice for Qatar context including beautification, shading, reduction of urban heat-island effect, natural habitat, soil stabilization, visual perception and many other aspects .The guidelines was established based on extensive benchmark for world best practices in landscape design as well as deep analysis for Qatar’s unique characteristics and challenges. A key objective of the guidelines is to meet these challenges while also conserving valuable water, energy and other natural resources in Qatar’s arid desert climate. Qatar landscape design guidelines report in conclusion is organized into six main chapters focusing on landscape urbanism as an integral part of the city-making process, where everything apart from buildings are associated and treated as ‘landscape’. Landscape urbanism in this context covers all: open spaces, movement corridors, streets, alleyways, parks, plazas, waterfronts, green corridors, street furniture, front spaces of plots, fences, pavements, trees, soft cape elements, and many other design elements, that are located within urban areas. The Guidelines demystify the interrelationship of three main design elements of place-making: landscape, built form and movement. The QLSDG is a toolkit for all those involved with urban design issues, at any level, in Qatar where landscape was introduced as one of the main indicators to judge the most livable cities. The case study report / presentation will elaborate the adopted framework in further details addressing all lesson learnt to achieve human-centric and multi-scale landscape design guidelines to create Liveable, sustainable and inclusive urban environment

Since the 1990s, “withdrawing secondary industry and promoting tertiary industry” has become a main strategy of industrial restructuring in Shanghai. Correspondingly, industrial sites in inner city have undergone tremendous transformation. After the initial phase of mass demolition and mass new construction, brownfield regeneration in Shanghai has shifted towards a more cautious approach of treating existing structure since the 2010s. Large scale of industrial sites, even not listed as cultural monuments, have been renovated and reused instead of redevelopment for commercial and residential purposes, which was often the case in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper presents various approaches of dealing with industrial heritage and argued that in recent decade adaptive reuse has been given higher priority than other approaches of dealing with industrial heritage, such as demolition and relocation. In the waves of redevelopment in the early 2000s, only few extraordinary buildings were kept while the rest of the factory buildings was demolished. The site of World Expo 2010 was such an example. In other cases, historical buildings were relocated from the original site and reconstructed to give way for real estate high-rise buildings. Recently, more and more large scale industrial sites have been completely kept and reused for mixed use of business, commercial and cultural purposes, so-called creative parks. Besides creative parks, an ongoing project is to develop an industrial site along the Huangpu River to an industrial park.

As we can see, after experiencing a rapid urbanization stage, China has begun to enter a high-quality urbanization development stage focusing on humanistic and ecological connotations, in which historical and cultural heritage has become a new engine of urban development. The urban government aiming at GDP growth unilaterally pursued the financial benefits of land in the rapid urbanization stage characterized by incremental expansion in China in the past. On the one hand, a large number of new city construction leads to the disorderly spread of cities; On the other hand, large-scale old city demolition activities have caused unprecedented damage to the historical environment, which has led to the gradual disappearance of urban characteristics. At present, China's urban development has begun to enter the stage of stock development, in which urban development and heritage protection are facing more severe conflicts. Scholars and government officials pay more and more attention to the protection of historical and cultural heritage. Because of the development of the concept of international heritage protection, the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) concept presented by UNESCO in 2011 provides a new perspective for the conservation of heritage. However, the fuzziness of its theoretical and practical basis weakens its wide application in different urban backgrounds. Pingyao, located in central China, is the first ancient city in China to be rated as a "Living World Cultural Heritage". As the most complete existing ancient city in China, Pingyao has a history of about 600 years, the urban form of which changes with the adjustment of urban functions. Pingyao's original thought of building a city followed the natural order of adapting to local conditions in the ancient Chinese traditional etiquette system. During the Ming Dynasty, the transformation of commercial function prompted the ancient city to produce a "street" space, a residential form called "fortress" appeared in the ancient city, and a commercial district called "Guanxiang" appeared outside the city. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, drastic changes in the social and economic structure caused the use of ancient cities to enter a disorderly state, and illegal construction and occupation caused serious damage to historical buildings. After Pingyao was recognized as a world cultural heritage in 1997, the development of tourism made heritage protection face more severe challenges. Scholars and the government have made various attempts in the utilization of historical buildings, the improvement of public space, the repair of residential buildings, and the arrangement of streets, focusing on restoring the overall style of Pingyao in Ming and Qing Dynasties. After 2011, Chinese experts tried to apply the concept of "Historic Urban Landscape" to various protection plans of Pingyao's historical and cultural heritage. The historic urban landscape method, which highlights the integrity and form value, is the basis for formulating the fragile areas of historic heritage and the urban development and protection plan based on communities, which has an important impact on the preservation of the complete urban form of Pingyao ancient city. With the current urban development paying more and more attention to humanistic and ecological connotations, the urban cultural heritage protection planning from the perspective of historic urban landscape guides the heritage protection and tourism development of Pingyao ancient city from a more macro national and regional level and cooperates with adaptive governance methods to realize reasonable protection and efficient utilization of buildings. The architecture and street texture of Pingyao ancient city can retain historical traces of different periods. This approach contributes to the sustainable development of Pingyao and is of high relevance to the protection of other Living World Cultural Heritage sites.

Faced with the demand for functional transformation of traditional commercial streets in the context of rapid commercial development, Japan has had some relatively successful cases. After land consolidation, building renovation and business upgrading, some traditional commercial streets in the centre of Tokyo, Japan, are thriving again. They not only attract many tourists and invigorate the community economy, but also retain the local folk traditions and cultural atmosphere. These cases provide us with the ideas of the transformation of traditional Chinese commercial streets. Among them, the traditional commercial streets in Nihonbashi still maintain a high degree of commercial prosperity and community vitality. This paper takes one traditional commercial street in Nihonbashi, Ningyocho, as the study case. The spatial structure, commercial supply of the street are investigated, so as to obtain an inspiration for improving the material form and carrying function of Chinese and other countries' commercial service in urban communities. It is found that the vertical spatial organization of the buildings in the commercial street of Ningyocho is often combined with other structural characteristics of the architecture in various forms. It is aimed at solving the problem of construction and reducing functional separation between high-rise buildings under the background of high density land use. As a commercial street that serves wide areas, Ningyocho's most attractive part for the outside crowd is actually its various restaurants, which makes up more than 30% of the business. Meanwhile, other entertainment and life service facilities are more limited and only meets the needs of residents within the block. Its community commerce not only satisfies the consumption of basic living goods and cultural entertainment, but also provides community public space and communication place for local residents. Elderly care, childcare assistance, environmental protection and other functions closely related to the society determine the significant contribution of Japanese community commerce to equalization of public services.

Urban morphology is a knowledge which its importance of it has been neglected a lot. The usages of this knowledge in urban planning are numerous, for example in energy, justice, general health and heritage. This paper will emphasize on the usage of urban morphology on heritage and tourism. Actually, by surveying the four elements of urban form (Natural context, streets system, plots system, buildings system) we can study the morphology of the historic city in the best way. It should be said that streets system, plots system, buildings system obeyed from the natural context and its features. Natural context consists of many elements such as topography, climate and water and so on which each city has its own features. All of these natural features effect on the other three elements of urban form that in surveying the case study it will be described. The case study of this paper is Qazvin city in Iran. This historical city has been located nearly in north of Iran and is a dry city with mild weather. This city has some individual features which by surveying them we can fine some principles about traditional urban planning of cities of Iran. In this study I will show that by surveying the four elements of the historic area of this city we can know it more comprehensively and completely.

Qanat is the oldest system of water harvesting. This system is able to transfer groundwater to dry lands in the most sustainable way to build up the cities. Building a Qanat has a simple technique and several elements make it which include a main well (mother well), a corridor, some serial wells and finally a stream on the ground floor (Mazhar). However we can notice a special civilization which we can call it “Qanat civilization” because Qanat is the main factor to flourish and develop the settlements, agriculture, cities and so on. Here we survey a case study: Naragh city. It is historic city with a rich civilization which is located nearly in the center of Iran. This city was irrigated by Qanats too and there were several hydraulic structures such as watermills, Payabs , water reservoir , washhouse and so on. The quotable water of the city was supplied by Haj allah dad Qanat . This Qanat was rehabilitated by the municipality of Naragh 15 years ago. This paper mainly describes the traditional water harvesting and water supplement in Naragh and hydraulic structures which work with this water. At the end I want to refer to the advantages and features of traditional harvesting and supplement of water in Iran which indeed are sustainable ways to harvesting and supplement of water and planner should learn and gain them. Water crises is near and thinking about it is necessary.

The establishment of municipalities in South Africa has been a long and difficult process, 25 years later it still appears to be evolving. In 1994, the new democratic government undertook to restructure the country’s racially segregated administrative structure by integrating areas to form cohesive municipal entities which would allow for the more efficient management of the municipal areas. However, the demarcation approach was easier to pen on paper than to implement in practice. This paper explored the South African spatial reform process from 1993 to 2020, by analyzing literature and legislative frameworks, in order to determine how municipalities were demarcated and the challenges they experienced. The study found that the spatial restructuring process was particularly complex since there was limited knowledge of the spatial landscape and there where many unresolved spatial administrative issues. The study calls for further research to support the formation of more efficient municipal areas which are more aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

The objectives of the Study were a comprehensive assessment of the urban planning potential and limitations of the development of a new city, the definition of its borders, the formation of key principles, parameters and a comprehensive model of the development of a new city. One of the tasks of the Study was the subsequent preparation of a detailed Technical Task for the development of the concept of a new city in Sakhalin Region in the framework of Open international competition. The new city is planned to be created on the territory of the Korsakov city district of the Sakhalin region with an area of about 1.2 thousand hectares. Korsakov is one of the key elements for Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk agglomeration, it is located 35 km from the capital of the region, where the main air and passenger traffic flow is concentrated. The development of transport and logistics infrastructure, as well as the associated development of the production cluster and business determine the prospect of creating a new Ecopolis city. By 2030, it is planned to increase the population of Korsakov by 25,000 inhabitants, to build at least a million m2 of medium-rise residential facilities using energy-saving technologies «smart house» and «smart city». The project of the new city should maximize the unique and multifaceted potential of the island, taking into account all planning restrictions: seismic activity, tsunamis, attrition, avalanches, mudflows, floods, ravines. In order to determine the place and role of the future new town in the development system of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk agglomeration, the main factors influencing the formation of agglomeration and the resilience of the new city were determined:  Transport accessibility.  Daily labor and episodic migration.  Unified systems of mutual cooperation among in the tourist industry.  The degree of economic and legal interconnected relationships of economic entities of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and surrounding settlements.  Mental city boundaries. Analysis of the intensity of connections made it possible to determine the boundaries of the "real city", as well as to highlight the hierarchy of territorial connectivity and create tasks for the planned urban transport framework. The research identified four components of harmonic development of the territory, based on the concept of sustainable development were determined:  Human capital.  Environment.  Economy.  Immaterial capital (identity). The proposed Ecopolis model is duocentric — the main residential areas are located between two centers, which provides a high level of accessibility between the main residential and non-residential functions. The optimal functional model was chosen taking into account the morphology of the active relief and the planning constraints of the site and is variable and assumes the relationship of elements. An important element in the development of a comprehensive model for the development of a new city was to take into account the opinions of key investors and stakeholders. As priority zones, in addition to public and residential clusters, the following are defined:  SakhalinTECH innovation and technology cluster.  Sports and recreational cluster.  Social and business cluster.  Research, production and transport and logistics complex Korsakov Port. An important part of the work was an anthropological study, in which the main portraits of future residents of the city were determined on the basis of prevailing life values. Model of the new city also includes proposals for the balance of territories, recommended building morphotypes, the phased implementation of the project and others. The proposed model will make it possible to create an Ecopolis as a progressive, innovative, environmentally friendly, multicultural city, a transport and logistics hub, a scientific and educational center integrated into world economy.