First published in 2008.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This collection written by Arab architects/urbanists is a sequel to Planning Middle Eastern Cities. Studies of Arab/Islamic cities used to be the province of 'outsiders' who not only prematurely generalized to a genre, but to one encapsulated in timelessness. In contrast, the case studies included in the earlier volume (Dubai, Sana'a, Baghdad, Algiers, Tunis, and Cairo), now supplemented in this volume by studies on three older cities (Amman, Beirut, and Rabat) and five newer oil cities (Riyadh, Kuwait City, Manama, Doha and Abu-Dhabi), focus, often critically, on the cities' rapid transformations." "Each case study traces the city's colonial and post-colonial history, the evolution of its distinctive social and physical structures, and its intersection with the region and the world."--BOOK JACKET.