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Article History

Received: 16 October 2023

Accepted: 2 January 2024

First Online: 17 February 2024

Declarations

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: I declare how I always handle my research work that avoid the conflicts of interest as of following: First, I am a part of academic staff for more than 40 years. I had worked at the department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Port-Said University, Egypt, since 1982. Then, I moved to the Department of Islamic Architecture, Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia in 2005 till now. Within this process, I engaged in different research and studies that concerned urban development and growth, including the built heritage, contemporary spatial development, and its impact on the environment. These urban areas are mainly located in different cities such as Cairo, Alexandria and Port-Said in Egypt, and Makkah and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, etc. I am also interested in investigating and analyzing the built heritage since I graduated in 1980. Moreover, I won several scholarships to conduct research work and studies in 1) the USA at Department of Urban Planning and Policy Development, RUTGERS University, State University of NJ; 2) in the UK at the School of Environmental Studies, Portsmouth University; and in Canada at the Department of Urban Planning, Ryerson University. During my career, I also supervised several masters and PHD theses which were also concerned with the urban and environmental development and growth of different existing cities. As a result, conducting all of my old and current research and studies are highly affected by my career, in terms of principles, ethics, originality, conflict interest, etc. The procedure of conducting my research and studies depends mainly on different factors such as: 1) funding opportunity and, in turn, their scope and objectives of the research work; 2) End-user research interest such as municipalities or/and governmental agencies and their research requirements and objectives; and 3) my research interests and purposes that are mainly concerned with investigating the built environment, in terms of their identity in relation to environmental aspects such as climate, cultural, religious, etc. This includes different cities in different countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, etc. Furthermore, my desire in conducting new research work always starts with defining an area of conflict or/and urban growth issues that may need analysis and investigation to overcome these issues. I always conduct my research work as a part of a teamwork, or, barely, by myself. The work mainly starts with defining research problems, objectives, methodology, etc.