Abstract
In the middle of the 20th century European Cities have undergone a massive conversion to promote the private personalized motor transport system over all other means of reaching from one point to another. Whilst the intentions were good, mainly to reach each point of the city in a minimum time, this conversion resulted in a huge number of problems in urban areas which at the end jeopardized the original goal. In the last quarter of the 20th century a re-thinking has commenced in Europe, undoing a lot of those changes with specific emphasis on promoting public transport to achieve sustainable urban dwellings. In the Middle Eastern fast-growing cities there is an opportunity to apply the lessons-learned in the physical planning and development of the urban areas. However, a mere adaption of the way Europe is now converting their cities, would be a much too simplistic approach and may not be completely applicable for cities in the Middle-East. The adaption of European practices of transport system developments to Middle-Eastern cities shall take into account the climate, culture, social fabric of the population, economic factors, etc. in order to develop sustainable dwellings. The ultimate goal must be, that residents enjoy living, working, shopping in their city with short and seamless journey times from one point to the other with an integrated transport system. With the challenges of climate change, in Middle-Eastern cities the subject of harnessing the strengths of different transport solutions is getting even more complex to add any other achievement target. The paper first outlines the different goals that shall be achieved. Those goals will be evaluated and sharpened considering the regional context. In the next step the paper compares the strengths and weaknesses of the different transportation solutions in achieving those goals. As a conclusion it discusses smart ways of combining several, if not all, of them to maximize the achievement of the established goals.
