Middle East

Officials in Dubai have announced plans to extend the emirate's 75-km rail system to more than 250 km.

April 12, 2011 - Emirates 24/7

The tiny mideast country of Qatar is a new hotbed of infrastructure activity and foreign investment, leading some to suggest that it will be the next place to take off in the region.

April 9, 2011 - CNBC

Larry Beasley, Vancouver's former chief city planner, was hired to help develop Abu Dhabi's very ambitious Plan 2030.

March 14, 2011 - Regarding Place Magazine

Michael Klare argues that the revolution and turmoil sweeping so many of the Middle Eastern oil-producing nations will bring the age of cheap oil to an end.

March 6, 2011 - Truthout

A landscape urbanism biennale in an unlikely suburb of Tel Aviv offers its working class citizens a look how their city can change for the better.

March 2, 2011 - The Architect's Newspaper

Qatar is building cities from scratch ahead of its hosting duties for the 2022 World Cup. One city to be located near the tournament's final match will house 200,000.

March 2, 2011 - Bloomberg

A Cairo native who had returned home before the recent unrest and revolution looks at the role of the city's Tahrir Square, and how recent events have given additional meaning to this public space.

March 1, 2011 - Places

The Mayor of Tel-Aviv has called the new Master Plan a "constitution for the city," yet local officials have stated they will not comment on the plan until after it is approved by the city council.

February 23, 2011 - Sustainable City blog

While calling Israeli settlement construction "folly" the U.S. has nonetheless vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlement construction as "illegal."

February 20, 2011 - Al Jazeera

New York Time's columnist David Leonhardt contends that what Egypt really needs to do is refocus on urbanism.

February 17, 2011 - The New York Times

More than $200 billion worth of projects are either planned or underway in Qatar, and nearly half of them are infrastructure.

February 4, 2011 - Gulf Times

With recent uprisings in Cairo and Tunis, we are reminded that the city has been the center of revolutionary action for hundreds of years, according to this piece from Edward L. Glaeser.

February 2, 2011 - The New York Times

Planned as an super-opulent development off the coast of Dubai, the artificial archipelago "The World" appears to be sinking back into the sea.

January 26, 2011 - Telegraph

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is also a broad infrastructure building effort, according to military officials who talk about a rail building effort known as the Silk Road Initiative

January 25, 2011 - Transportation Nation

Nick Aster takes a ride on the world's first fully operational trackless "Personal Rapid Transit" system.

January 21, 2011 - Earth & Industry

Aleppo, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, is undergoing a conservation project that includes the restoration of hundreds of houses, a new park, and rebuilding city streets and services.

January 14, 2011 - The New York Times

Over the last 50 years, preservation in Syria focused on restoring architecturally significant buildings, "sometimes destroyed the communities around them," writes Nicolai Ouroussoff. A plaza in Aleppo represents a change in strategy.

December 27, 2010 - The New York Times

Capitalism and bourgeois values built the city of Tel Aviv, which stands today as an outlier in Israel, according to this article.

December 22, 2010 - City Journal

An under-20 population of more than 13 million and an eagerness to move the national economy away from oil production have the Saudi government investing heavily in huge new cities that are designed to encourage a 'Western-style modernity.'

December 13, 2010 - The New York Times

As Qatar prepares to host the 2022 World Cup, officials there have announced plans to build an urban rail network to link its 12 World Cup venues.

December 13, 2010 - Railway Gazette